Article: Martin, M.J. & Pritchard, M.E. (1991). Factors associated with alcohol use in later adolescence. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 52(1), 5-9.
In a test of the sociocultural versus medical model of alcoholism, this research examined for the contribution of several selected personal and family factors to the alcohol usage patterns of a large, culturally and ethnically heterogeneous sample of older adolescents. The medical model postulates that alcoholism is mostly due to biogenetic factors whereas the sociocultural model states that while biological and genetic factors play a role in people's alcohol consumption behavior and patterns, a good deal of the variance in alcoholism is due to psychosocial factors (personal and social variables).
All data in the study were taken from the "High School and Beyond" (HSB) database compiled by the National Opinion Research Center for the United States Department of Education Center for Statistics. Data collected in the HSB project were derived from a highly stratified national probability sample of over 1,000 secondary schools.
Using this database, the authors examined the responses of older adolescents (ages 20 and 21 years) who had been high school seniors in 1980, who had participated in the project in the 1982 and 1984 data collection period, and who had completed the alcohol use section of the survey questionnaires administered as part of HSB project methods.
Based on their review of the existing literature, Martin and Pritchard (1991) tested the basic research hypothesis that frequency and intensity of alcohol use would be significantly associated with personal variables (gender, ethnicity, internal locus of control, positive self-concept and family orientation) as well as familial variables (socioeconomic status, family income, and urbanicity).
Frequency of alcohol use was operationalized as the number of times alcohol was consumed in the last 30 days (none, few d
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