Factors Associated With High School Students’ Alcohol Consumption Across Three European Countries

• Author: Julius Janáček,Václav Rybáček,Michaela Ulrichová
• Published date: 01 January 2021
• Date: 01 January 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/0022042620963037
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0022042620963037

Journal of Drug Issues

2021, Vol. 51(1) 159 –180

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DOI: 10.1177/0022042620963037

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Article

Factors Associated With High

School Students’ Alcohol

Consumption Across Three

European Countries

Julius Janáček1, Václav Rybáček1,

and Michaela Ulrichová2

Abstract

Based on a survey conducted in high schools in three countries—the Czech Republic, Italy,

and Slovenia—this study investigates the factors influencing alcohol consumption among high

school students. Our analysis is based on four linear regression models, with the dependent

variable, Alcohol Consumption—one model for each country and a joint model for all countries.

The results show that there are large differences as far as drinking habits and patterns across

countries are concerned. Whereas the patterns of the Czech students are similar to those

of Slovenian students, the behavior of the Italians shows more distinctive features. Factors

positively related to alcohol consumption include cigarette smoking, marijuana consumption,

time spent with friends (positive relations), sport activities, art engagement, and gender-female

(negative relation). As factors regarding students’ psychological state are insignificant, it may be

concluded that alcohol consumption among teenagers from our sample is a phenomenon that

is insensitive to changes in character but sensitive to social environment and life circumstances.

Our results can serve as a map showing various drinking patterns. Applicable results can be

deduced.

Keywords

alcohol, alcohol use, alcohol consumption, high school students, survey, factors

Introduction

Our study investigates factors associated with alcohol consumption among high school students

from the Czech Republic, Italy, and Slovenia. The importance of such research is explained

below.

In most Western countries, alcohol consumption has become a common part of life for many

people. This is a major problem, especially in the case of young people; alcohol consumption can

have a quite negative effect on their health (see, for example, Mukamal et al., 2003; Ruitenberg

1Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic

2Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic

Corresponding Author:

Václav Rybáček, Faculty of Social and Economic Studies, Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem,

Moskevská 54, Ústí nad Labem 40096, Czech Republic.

Email: vaclav.rybacek@ujep.cz

963037JODXXX10.1177/0022042620963037Journal of Drug IssuesJanáček et al.

research-article2020

160 Journal of Drug Issues 51(1)

et al., 2002) although this effect can manifest itself in later part of their lives. The danger of alco-

hol use among young people lies also in the fact that at their young age they can develop addic-

tive habits that will influence their adult lives (Prescott & Kendler, 1999). Thus, it is in the

interest of society to investigate this phenomenon in depth to study what the factors are when it

comes to alcohol consumption and to find out what can be done to prevent or ideally discourage

young people from drinking. Our article is a modest contribution to this ongoing process of

investigating factors that are related to drinking. We do so by studying high school students from

three countries.

Many studies (see the next section) suggest that students’ drinking habits are formed by many

factors. If trying to understand young peoples’ motivation to indulge in alcohol consumption,

many areas of their lives and many factors within these areas must be taken into account. Our

study does so as it studies the relations between many factors and alcohol consumption.

Table 1 contains some of the key characteristics related to the alcohol consumption in the

countries studied in this article. The content is derived from the World Health Organization’s

(WHO) Global status report on alcohol use in 2018.

Table 1 clearly shows that patterns connected to alcohol differ significantly across countries,

both in terms of alcohol consumption and in terms of public policies concerning alcohol.1 This is

one of the reasons why factors influencing alcohol consumption can be expected to differ across

countries as well. Our aim is to bring contribution to the ongoing research of alcohol connections

by identifying potential alcohol use predictors among students from the three countries. The

uniqueness of our study lies in the cross-country dimension of our methodological approach.

This article is organized as follows: In the next section, we provide a review of the existing

literature on the relationship between alcohol consumption and happiness. Thereafter, we

describe our methodology with all of the details needed to understand the procedures imple-

mented in this study and then we turn to our results. The section “Discussion” is based on a dis-

cussion of the results, comparing alcohol predictors for the Czech Republic, Italy, and Slovenia,

while the last one naturally concludes our article.

Literature Review

Alcohol use among students has drawn much attention from researchers for its influence on

health and happiness (Thakker, 1998). A number of studies confirm the fact that drinking alcohol

is very widespread and common among students: for example, 42% of first-year college students

Table 1. Overview of Alcohol Consumption in the Analyzed Countries, 2018.

Indicator related to alcohol consumption Czech Republic Slovenia Italy

Minimum drinking age (in years) 18 18 18

Average per capita consumption of alcohol

(in liters of pure alcohol)

14.4 12.6 7.5

National monitoring system of alcohol consumption No Yes Yes

Sobriety checkpoints No Yes Yes

Random breath testing Yes Yes Yes

Duties, exercise, tax stamps, or labels for beer,

wine, and spirit

No Yes Yes

Prevalence of heavy episodic drinking

(in %, population 15+)

42.1 37.5 22.1

Legal binding regulations on alcohol advertising No Yes Yes

Source. World Health Organization (2018a).