Middle School Students' Alcohol Expectancies and Related Factors

중학생들의 음주기대와 음주기대 관련 요인

The purposes of this study were to compare middle school students' alcohol expectancies with high school students' alcohol expectancies and to identify factors (family history of alcohol problems, television advertisements, age, gender, drinking experience, alcohol prevention education) related to their alcohol expectancies. A total of 1,164 middle school students in seven metropolitan areas in Korea participated in this study. The major finding of this study was that the respondents scored higher on negative alcohol expectancies than high school adolescents. As found in previous studies, factors related to adolescents' alcohol expectancies were also significantly related to respondents' alcohol expectancies in this study. Respondents who had family histories of alcohol problems, had drinking experiences, and were older expect drinking in a more positive manner. This study also found that alcohol advertising affected respondents' alcohol expectancies. However, this study found that current substance abuse prevention programs did not affect respondents' alcohol expectancies at all. This finding may suggest that some changes on current prevention programs should be needed in order to be more effective. Finally the result on the relationship gender and alcohol expectancies in this study was different from previous studies. Female respondents expected drinking more positively than male counterparts. This study suggests that further studies on this issue are necessary.