A socio-ecological perspective on alcohol use in adolescence

Alcohol use among adolescents has become a public health problem(Morawska & Oei,2005). Although the frequency and the amount of alcoholic beverages consumed vary greatly from different countries and cultures, in two thirds of the ESPAD countries the vast majority of the students (15-16 years) have drank alcohol at least once in their lifetime. Moreover, in half of the participating countries, 47% of the students had consumed at least one glass of alcohol at the age of 13 or younger, and 14% had been drunk at that age. These changing patterns of consumption are associated with a variety of negative outcomes (Coleman & Cater, 2003). In a socio-ecological perspective, many studies (Nation & He…