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Journal of Health Psychology
DOI: 10.1177/1359105309103573
2009; 14; 536 J Health Psychol
Emmanuel Kuntsche and Sherry H. Stewart
Model
of Individual Drinking Motives and Alcohol Use in Adolescencea Mediational
Why My Classmates Drink: Drinking Motives of Classroom Peers as Predictors
http://hpq.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/14/4/536
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536
Why My Classmates
Drink
Drinking Motives of
Classroom Peers as
Predictors of Individual
Drinking Motives and Alcohol
Use in Adolescence—a
Mediational Model
EMMANUEL KUNTSCHE
Swiss Institute for the Prevention of Alcohol and Drug
Problems, Switzerland
SHERRY H. STEWART
Dalhousie University, Canada
Abstract
A structural equation model was
estimated based on a Swiss national
sample of 5649 12- to 18-year-olds to
test whether individual drinking
motives mediate the link between
classmates’ motives and individual
alcohol use. Results showed that the
social, enhancement, coping and
conformity motives of individual
students are associated with the
corresponding motive dimension of
other students in the class. No direct
effect of the four classmates’ motives
on individual drinking, but an indirect
effect via individual motives was
observed. It appears that drinking
motives within the adolescent social
environment exert their influence on
drinking by way of shaping
individual motives.
Journal of Health Psychology
Copyright © 2009 SAGE Publications
Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore
and Washington DC
www.sagepublications.com
Vol 14(4) 536–546
DOI: 10.1177/1359105309103573
COMPETING INTERESTS: None declared.
ADDRESS. Correspondence should be directed to:
EMMANUEL KUNTSCHE, Swiss Institute for the Prevention of Alcohol and
Drug Problems, Research Department, Av. Ruchonnet 14, PO Box 870,
Lausanne 1001, Switzerland. [email: ekuntsche@sfa-ispa.ch]
Keywords
■adolescents
■alcohol use
■classmates
■drinking motives
■mediation
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Introduction
ALCOHOL use is known to be determined by a large
variety of factors both within the individual (e.g.
genetic disposition, personality characteristics,
cognitions) and within his or her environment
(e.g. factors at the level of the society, neighbourhood,
family, peer groups and drinking situations: for
reviews see Ham & Hope, 2003; Hawkins, Catalano,
& Miller, 1992; Kuntsche, Rehm, & Gmel, 2004).
From both the conceptual point of view, and in terms
of prevention, the factors most proximal to drinking
are of greatest strategic importance. These factors are
not only thought to be more easily accessible targets
for prevention efforts than most of the more distal
factors, but they also tend to reflect distal factors such
as culture, situation or personality (Cox & Klinger,
1988, 2004).
According to the Motivational Model of Alcohol
Use (Cox & Klinger, 1988), drinking motives are the
most proximal factor for engaging in drinking.
Consequently, empirical studies have demonstrated
that drinking motives are the gateway through which
more distal factors such as personality factors or
alcohol expectancies are mediated (Catanzaro &
Laurent, 2004; Cooper, Frone, Russell, & Mudar,
1995; Kuntsche, Knibbe, Engels, & Gmel, 2007;
Kuntsche, von Fischer, & Gmel, 2008b; Stewart,
Loughlin, & Rhyno, 2001). Unfortunately, not much
is known about the degree to which this mediation
also holds true for the drinking motives of other
individuals in the drinkers’ social environment such
as peers in the school classroom. For most of the
year, European students typically spend more than
two-thirds of their waking hours each week at school
or engaged in school-related activities (Alsaker &
Flammer, 1999). Thus, school largely determines
their peer group (Steinberg, 2000). Therefore, it is
important to focus on the behaviours, cognitions and
motivations of classmates as one of the major social
environments and influences in adolescence. The
present study’s first aim is to determine to what
degree individual students’ drinking motives are
consistent with those of all other students in the
class. Second, this study investigates to what degree
the alcohol use of individual students is directly
associated with their classmates’ drinking motives
and indirectly through the shaping of their own
drinking motives.
Drinking motives represent a subjectively derived
decisional framework for alcohol use that is based
on personal experience, situation and expectancies
(Cooper, 1994; Cox & Klinger, 1988). The decision
to drink is based on the rewards that the person
expects to achieve by drinking compared with not
drinking. These expected rewards can involve either
positive reinforcement (to enhance positive
outcomes) or negative reinforcement (to avoid or
attenuate negative outcomes). The source of the
expected rewards can further be either internal (i.e.
changes in personal affective states) or external (i.e.
changes in the individual’s social environment).
Accordingly, there are four categories of drinking
motives (Cooper, 1994): drinking to enhance
positive mood or well-being (enhancement: positive,
internal), to obtain social rewards (social: positive,
external), to attenuate negative emotions (coping:
negative, internal) and to avoid social rejection
(conformity: negative, external). By adopting a
specific motive for drinking, the decision to engage
in alcohol consumption (vs not to drink) is made.
For example, an adolescent may decide to drink
because it gives him or her a pleasant feeling or
because it helps him/her when depressed or nervous.
Concerning characteristics of the personal social
environment, association with drinking peer groups
has been found to be among the strongest predictors
of substance use in adolescence (see Kuntsche et al.,
2004, for a review). Adolescents tend not only to
select their peers in accordance with their own
substance-use habits (Dishion & Owen, 2002;
Kandel, 1985) but also to initiate or increase their
substance use when associated with substance-
using peers. Being together with peers, adolescents
tend to accept alcohol offers, to feel pressured to
drink or to submit to the peer-drinking norm or to
social modelling (Borsari & Carey, 2001; Dishion
& Owen, 2002; Jones-Webb et al., 1997; Kandel,
1985). It is plausible to assert that affiliations
with peers who have particular drinking motives
might shape an individual adolescent’s own drink-
ing motives. Application of social learning theory
(Maisto, Carey, & Bradizza, 1999) to the acquisition
of drinking motives would suggest that adolescents
would observe the drinking motives of their peers,
observe the rewarding consequences obtained by
their peers and then model the motives displayed
by their peers. For example, those who go out with
friends who drink for social motives might also
learn to drink for the same motives themselves due
to observation and imitation of these peer motives.
In addition to this vicarious conditioning, learning
of motives could also occur via verbal transmission
of information between peers (Rachman, 1977). For
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example, those adolescents who have peers who
drink for enhancement motives might learn through
verbal exchanges with peers about alcohol being a
good way to enhance internal positive states, and
then may subsequently adopt enhancement motives
for their own drinking behaviour.
The present study tests the following three
hypotheses. First, concerning the way in which
individual drinking motives are linked with those of
other students in the school class, we expect a con-
gruency between the individual and classmate
motive dimensions. That means that the strongest
relationship should occur when the dimensions are
matched (e.g. individual social–classmate social,
individual enhancement–classmate enhancement,
etc.). Either the modelling or the verbal transmis-
sion route to adolescents’ motive acquisition from
peers would predict such specificity. For example,
an adolescent observing a peer drinking in response
to peer pressure and observing a peer’s social
acceptance by drinking should subsequently model
conformity drinking. As another example, an ado-
lescent hearing frequently from his or her peers that
drinking alcohol is a good way to relieve tensions or
alleviate worries should be specifically prone to
coping motivated drinking him- or herself.
Second, the individual drinking motive dimen-
sions are closely related to individual alcohol use
(measured by the number of drinks consumed in the
past 12 months and the frequency of having five or
more drinks on single occasions in the last 30 days).
Previous research has demonstrated that enhance-
ment, social and coping motives are positively
related to adolescent alcohol use whereas confor-
mity motives are negatively related (Cooper, 1994;
Kuntsche, Stewart, & Cooper, 2008a; Stewart et al.,
in press). Enhancement and coping motives are
additionally associated with heavy drinking
(Kuntsche, Knibbe, Gmel, & Engels, 2005).
Third, according to the assumption that individ-
ual drinking motives shape the final decision
towards individual alcohol use (Cox & Klinger,
1988; Cooper, 1994), we hypothesize that environ-
mental factors (in our case the drinking motives of
other students in the class) exert their influences
exclusively through individual drinking motives.
Thus, we expect that the link between classmates’
drinking motives and individual drinking is
indirect—mediated through the individual’s
drinking motives. Such mediation occurs when the
indirect link (classmates’ motives–individual’s
motive–individual’s alcohol use), but not the direct
one (classmates’ motives–individual’s alcohol use),
is significant (Baron & Kenny, 1986).
Method
Participants
The present study used data from the 2003 Swiss
contribution to the ‘European School Survey
Project on Alcohol and Drugs’ (Hibell et al., 2000),
which is described in detail elsewhere (Kuntsche,
Knibbe, Gmel, & Engels, 2006b, 2006c; Kuntsche
et al., 2007). Once permission to conduct the survey
was obtained from the relevant educational authori-
ties in the different federal states in Switzerland
(called ‘cantons’), principals of the schools to be
sampled were informed. Self-completion question-
naires were administered in school classes between
April and June 2003. The time frame for filling out
the questionnaires was one school lesson (about
45 minutes). Consistent with the APA Ethical
Principles (American Psychological Association,
2002), the students could freely choose to participate
and confidentiality was ensured at all stages of
the study.
Based on a list of all classes of public schools in
Switzerland from eighth to 10th grade, random
cluster sampling was used, where the classes served
as the primary sampling unit. Although the Swiss
school system varies slightly from canton to canton,
students are usually assigned to classes based on
regional and not on individual characteristics, and
they usually remain in class with the same peers for
the entirety of the school day. An overall response
rate of 83.1 per cent was reached. The sample can
be considered as representative for all eighth, ninth
and 10th graders in the German-, French- and
Italian-speaking regions of Switzerland.
Since drinking motives were exclusively assessed
among drinkers, those who did not indicate at least
one drinking occasion in the last 12 months (n=
1415, 19.7%) were excluded. Those who had more
than two missing values on drinking motives (n=
71; 1.2%), or who did not answer questions about
alcohol use (n=58; 1.1%) were likewise excluded.
Remaining missing values (n=363; 6.3%) were
imputed by means of Markov Chain Monte Carlo
estimates (Gilks, Richardson, & Spiegelhalter,
1996). The advantage of such an imputation method
is that the information on observed values for an
individual is taken into account, that is, imputation
is conditional on individuals that have the same
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KUNTSCHE & STEWART: WHY MY CLASSMATES DRINK
539
reponse pattern on all but the missing items. The
final sample consisted of 5649 12- to 18-year-old
alcohol-using students (age mean (M)=15.1 years,
standard deviation (SD) =0.95; 49% girls). The
students came from 408 classes in 328 schools
(average number of alcohol-using students per class
=13.8, SD =3.9) in the German- (70.9%), French-
(22.3%) and Italian-speaking (6.8%) regions of
Switzerland.
Measures
An interdisciplinary research group from the
participating countries developed the core ESPAD
questionnaire (Hibell et al., 2004) and the
adolescent version of the Drinking Motive
Questionnaire (DMQ-R; Cooper, 1994) was added
for the Swiss survey. Subsequently, the resulting
questionnaire was translated into the three
languages most frequently spoken in Switzerland:
German, French and Italian. Translations from one
national language to the other as well as translations
back into English were conducted to guarantee the
accuracy of the three national language versions.
Drinking motives were assessed with the DMQ-
R (Cooper, 1994), which is a 20-item self-report
measure that includes four conceptually and empir-
ically distinct dimensions. Each dimension consist-
ing of five items was rated on a six-point relative
frequency scale with anchors ranging from ‘Never’
to ‘Almost always’. Because of high internal con-
sistencies (internal consistencies: αenhancement =.85,
αsocial =.82, αconformity =.86, αcoping =.88) in the pre-
sent study, the items for each motive dimension
were added up to form summary scale scores as
suggested by Cooper (1994). To obtain a score for
the motives of all other students in the class, we
used the following formula:
Classmate motive scorei=((class mean motive
scorej* number of classmatesi) – individual
motive scorei) / (number of classmatesi– 1)
where iindicates a particular individual student in a
particular class j. This formula was applied for the
four drinking motive dimensions separately.
Based on the epidemiological literature, there
are two main dimensions of alcohol consumption
which are differently related to a variety of health-
related outcomes (Rehm et al., 2004): average vol-
ume of alcohol consumption was found to be
related to more long-term negative consequences
such as disease whereas pattern of drinking (often
measured by having five drinks or more in a row,
Gmel, Rehm, & Kuntsche, 2003) was found to be
linked to acute negative consequences such as
accidents and injuries (Gmel et al., 2003; Rehm
et al., 2004). To cover these two dimensions of alco-
hol consumption, drinking volume and 5+drinking
were chosen as outcome variables. To measure the
number of drinks consumed in the last 30 days
(‘Volume’), the 30-day frequency (from 0 to 40 or
more) was multiplied by the total number of stan-
dard drinks of any alcoholic beverage consumed
on a typical occasion (from 0 to 5 or more).
Additionally, the 30-day frequency of having five
or more drinks in a row (‘5+drinking’; from 0 to
10 or more times) was included. Both alcohol use
variables were log-transformed to approximate a
normal distribution and to reduce the impact of
extreme values which can be possibly due to
outlier effects (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2001). All
descriptive statistics of the alcohol use variables
provided in the manuscript are calculated prior to
log-transformation.
Data analysis
Figure 1 provides a graphical representation of the
regression model, which was estimated using the
Mplus 5.1 software (Muthén & Muthén, 2007).
Since individual drinking motives and alcohol
use in adolescents tend to differ according to gender
and age groups (Cooper, 1994; Kuntsche, Gmel,
Wicki, Rehm, & Grichting, 2006a; Kuntsche,
Knibbe, Gmel, & Engels, 2006d), the mediators and
the outcome variables were adjusted for the effects
of gender and age. Since the links between drinking
motives of other students in the class and students’
alcohol use might additionally depend on character-
istics of the school class, the outcome variables
were additionally adjusted for effects of class size
and the proportion of drinkers in the class. Mediated
effects, that is, the product of the coefficient of the
path between classmates’ and individual motives
and the path between individual motives and alco-
hol use (Baron & Kenny, 1986), are directly pro-
vided in Mplus. Standard errors and significance
levels of mediated effects were obtained by means
of the delta method (Muthén & Muthén, 2007). The
robust estimation of standard errors in Mplus has
the additional advantages of accounting for non-
normal distribution of outcomes and non-indepen-
dence of observations due to cluster sampling
(Muthén & Muthén, 2007). Reported effect sizes
are standardized regression coefficients (Betas) and
explained variance (R2).
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JOURNAL OF HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY 14(4)
540
5+drinking
Classmates’
Conformity
Motives
Classmates’
Coping
Motives
Classmates’
Enhancement
Motives
Classmates’
Social
Motives
Volume
Individual
Conformity
Motives
Individual
Enhancement
Motives
Individual
Coping
Motives
Individual
Social
Motives
Figure 1. Graphical representation of the estimated regression model.
Note: Outcome effects have been adjusted for the effects of gender, age, class size and the proportion of drinkers in
the class
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To evaluate the overall model fit, we used the
comparative fit index (CFI), the Tucker-Lewis index
(TLI), the root mean square error of approximation
(RMSEA) and the standardized root mean square
residual (SRMR). The CFI and TLI relate to the
total variance accounted for by the model, where
values close to 1 (i.e. higher than .90), were sought
(Kline, 2005). The RMSEA and SRMR relate to the
residual variance, where values close to 0 (i.e. lower
than .10), were sought (Kline, 2005).
Results
Descriptive analyses revealed that, on average, there
were 18.4 students per class (SD =3.6, range =6 to
30, kurtosis =–0.6, skewness =–1.0) and, on aver-
age, 85.8 per cent of students in each class were
drinkers (SD =0.1, range =35.0 to 100 per cent,
kurtosis =1.1, skewness =–1.1). The students
scored highest on social motives (M=2.8, SD =1.2,
kurtosis =–0.7, skewness =0.4) followed by
enhancement (M=2.7, SD =1.3, kurtosis =–0.6,
skewness =0.5), coping (M=1.9, SD =1.1, kurto-
sis =1.7, skewness =1.4) and conformity (M=1.4,
SD =0.7, kurtosis =11.7, skewness =3.1) motives,
in that order, similar to findings from previous stud-
ies on adolescent drinking motives (Kuntsche et al.,
2008a). On average, the participants had five drink-
ing occasions (M=5.0, SD =7.5, kurtosis =12.0,
skewness =3.2) and consumed 17 drinks in the last
30 days (M=16.6, SD =35.5, kurtosis =20.3,
skewness =4.1), and had about two drinks at a typ-
ical occasion (M=2.2, SD =1.8, kurtosis =–0.7,
skewness =0.5). The participants had about one
occasion in the last 30 days on which they con-
sumed five or more drinks in a single sitting (M=
1.3, SD =2.3, kurtosis =7.1, skewness =2.6).
Zero-order correlations of all variables used in the
structural equation model are provided in Table 1.
As can be seen, there were significant (p< .001),
positive bivariate correlations between all class-
mates’ drinking motives variables and the individ-
ual drinking variables (volume and 5+drinking) in
all cases but one (i.e. between classmates’ confor-
mity motives and individual drinking volume).
Relations between classmates’ motives and individ-
ual students’ motives, and between individual stu-
dents’ motives and individual students’ drinking
behaviour, are described in more detail below.
Results from the structural equation model showed
high congruency between individually indicated
motives and those indicated by the other students in
the class (Table 2). Individual social motives were
related to the social motives, but not to any other
motives, indicated by the classmates. The same was
the case for enhancement motives. Also for coping
and conformity motives, the relation was strongest
when there was congruency between the classmates’
and the individual motives (coping-coping, confor-
mity-conformity). However, particularly for individ-
ual conformity motives, social, enhancement and
coping motives of the other students in the class, also
showed a significant association.
Concerning alcohol use, particularly the individ-
ual social and enhancement motives were positively
related to typical drinking volume. Individual
enhancement and coping drinking were positively
related to 5+drinking (Table 3). There was also a
significant negative link between individual confor-
mity motives and both alcohol use variables.
Concerning the motives of all other students in the
class, no significant relation to individual alcohol
use was found. However, the corresponding indirect
effects of classmates’ motives through individual
motives on individual alcohol use were significant.
This was the case for all four motive dimensions
and both alcohol use variables.
Discussion
The aims of the present study were to investigate:
(1) to what degree social, enhancement, coping and
conformity motives of individual students are asso-
ciated with the corresponding motive dimensions of
all other students in the class; and (2) to what degree
the alcohol use of individual students is directly
associated with their classmates’ drinking motives
and indirectly through the shaping of their own
drinking motives.
The results demonstrated that particular motive
dimensions of individual students are related to
the corresponding motive dimension indicated by
their classmates (i.e. social–social, enhancement–
enhancement, etc.). This is consistent with predic-
tions of social learning theory (Maisto et al., 1999)
that individual drinking motives are shaped in
accordance with the drinking motives of others in a
particular social environment (in our case the school
class) through mechanisms such as modelling or
verbal transmission (Rachman, 1977). Alternatively
or in addition, it might be that adolescents select
peers who are not only similar in terms of drinking
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JOURNAL OF HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY 14(4)
542
Table 1. Zero-order correlations among the variables used in the study
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
2. Age .00
3. Class size –.04 –.08
4. Proportion –.01 .33 –.05
of drinkers in
the class
5. Classmates’ .01 .12 –.07 .20
social motives
6. Classmates’ .00 .14 –.04 .22 .81
enhancement
motives
7. Classmates’ .01 –.01 –.11 .06 .59 .53
coping motives
8. Classmates’ .02 –.12 –.05 –.05 .41 .23 .53
conformity
motives
9. Individual .14 .06 –.02 .07 .17 .14 .11 .07
social motives
10. Individual .11 .06 –.01 .08 .14 .16 .08 .03 .80
enhancement
motives
11. Individual –.04 .01 –.04 .02 .11 .08 .15 .10 .51 .51
coping motives
12. Individual .09 –.05 –.02 –.02 .07 .02 .10 .13 .36 .25 .42
conformity
motives
13. Volume .14 .17 –.06 .15 .14 .14 .09 .01 .51 .55 .34 .06
14. 5+drinking .16 .09 –.09 .07 .13 .11 .11 .05 .46 .50 .36 .11 .66
Note:1=Gender (girls coded as 0, boys as 1); for r>.04: p<.001
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KUNTSCHE & STEWART: WHY MY CLASSMATES DRINK
543
habits (Borsari & Carey, 2001; Dishion & Owen,
2002; Jones-Webb et al., 1997; Kandel, 1985), but
also similar in terms of drinking motives. For exam-
ple, adolescents who drink to enjoy parties and cel-
ebrations better may select to affiliate with peers
who drink for the same motives at social events.
Future longitudinal research is necessary to disen-
tangle the direction of causality in the relation
between individual and peer drinking motives (i.e.
social causation or social selection).
Although in general there appears to be a high
congruency of drinking motives among the different
students in the classroom, there was one exception
from this general pattern. Although the classmates’
conformity motives were still the strongest predictor
for individual conformity motives, unlike the other
motive dimensions, social, enhancement and coping
motives of other students in the class were also
related to individual conformity motives. This might
be related to the fact that conformity motives are
usually reported by adolescents who rarely drink,
that is, only on special occasions such as family cel-
ebrations, weddings or New Year’s Eve, to fit in with
a group and not to feel left out (Kuntsche, 2007).
Thus an adolescent, who may be just considering
whether or not to drink, might be more likely to
drink to fit in with peers when in a social environ-
ment where other students are drinking for various
reasons. Hence, unlike the other motives, individual
conformity motives may be shaped by a variety of
different drinking motives in the peer group.
Also for coping motives, a significant relation to
social and conformity motives of other students in
the class was found. However, unlike conformity
motives, the effect size was rather small and only
significant at the 5 per cent-error level. This might
be simply due to the high sample size in the present
study of more than 5600 adolescents. Taken
together, the motives of other students in the class
explained between 3 and 5 per cent of the variance
of individual drinking motives. That means that
there are a variety of other variables responsible for
the individual drinking motivation besides the
motives of classmates. Other possible routes of
Table 2. Drinking motives of other students in the class as predictors of individual students’ drinking motives in the
structural equation model presented in Fig. 1 (standardized regression coefficients, t-ratios in brackets and explained
variance)
Individual drinking motives
Classmates’ drinking motives Social Enhancement Coping Conformity
Social .14*** (6.0) .01 (0.6) .05* (2.5) .06** (2.8)
Enhancement .00 (0.1) .15*** (7.3) –.03 (–1.6) –.06*** (3.3)
Coping .03 (1.6) .01 (0.4) .12*** (6.5) –.05** (3.2)
Conformity .00 (0.1) –.01 (–1.1) .03* (2.0) .08*** (4.1)
Explained variance (R2) 5.0% 4.1% 2.6% 2.8%
Note: All regression coefficient are adjusted for the effects of gender and age; model fit: CFI =.999, TLI =.993,
RMSEA =.017, SRMR =.005
*p<.05; **p<.01; ***p<.001
Table 3. Drinking motives as predictors of alcohol use
in the structural equation model presented in Fig. 1
(standardized regression coefficients, t-ratios in brackets
and explained variance)
Volume 5+ drinking
Individual motive scores
Social .22*** (10.8) .13*** (6.0)
Enhancement .32*** (15.7) .32*** (14.6)
Coping .12*** (7.9) .16*** (9.6)
Conformity –.15*** (–10.4) –.09*** (–6.4)
Classmates’ motive scores
Social .05 (1.9) .05 (1.8)
Enhancement –.03 (–1.3) –.03 (–1.4)
Coping .03 (1.8) .03 (1.8)
Conformity –.02 (–1.4) –.00 (–0.5)
Mediated effect (classmates’ motives
though individual motives)
Social .03*** (5.2) .02*** (4.2)
Enhancement .05*** (6.7) .05*** (6.5)
Coping .01*** (4.7) .02*** (5.2)
Conformity –.01*** (−3.8) –.01*** (–3.3)
Explained 36.4% 29.9%
variance (R2)
Note. All regression coefficient are adjusted for the
effects of gender, age, class size, and the proportion of
drinkers in the class; *** p <.001
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acquisition of individual drinking motives include
social learning (modelling and verbal transmission)
from family members or from the mass media.
Also, personal experience with specific rewarding
consequences of alcohol consumption (e.g. anxi-
olytic or stimulant effects) may be at play in the
shaping of adolescents’ drinking motives.
The results also showed that, despite the high
sample size, there was no direct effect of all four
classmates’ drinking motive dimensions on individ-
ual alcohol use and heavy drinking. However, for all
four dimensions, there was an indirect effect via
individual drinking motives that was significant,
even at the 0.1 per cent error level.Thus, the results
provide empirical support for the assumption that,
adjusted for class size and the proportion of drink-
ing students in the class, individual drinking
motives function as mediators in the link between
the motives of others in the same social environ-
ment (the school class) and individual alcohol use.
While previous studies demonstrated such a media-
tion by drinking motives for either alcohol
expectancies (Catanzaro & Laurent, 2004; Cooper
et al., 1995; Kuntsche et al., 2007) or personality
factors (Cooper et al., 1995; Kuntsche et al., 2008b;
Stewart et al., 2001) and young people’s alcohol
use, this is, to our knowledge, the first study demon-
strating that such mediation of drinking motives is
also the case for environmental factors and individ-
ual alcohol use. In this way, the present study pro-
vides further support for the main assumption of
the motivational Model of Alcohol Use (Cox &
Klinger, 1988), namely, that drinking motives are
the gateway through which the influence of other
more distal factors is mediated.
A strength of the study is the use of an interna-
tionally validated and theory-based instrument to
assess drinking motives (i.e. the DMQ-R; Cooper,
1994; Kuntsche et al., 2008a) and the large number
of students and classes included in this nationally
representative classroom-based survey (Kuntsche
et al., 2006b, 2006c, 2007). For most of the year,
European students typically spend more than two-
thirds of their waking hours each week at school or
engaged in school-related activities (Alsaker &
Flammer, 1999) and, thus, school largely determines
their peer group (Steinberg, 2000). Unfortunately, it
was not possible in the present study to include the
motives of friends outside the school class. In future,
by means of a bar lab design (Bot, Engels, &
Knibbe, 2005), for example, it would be possible to
investigate the impact of close friends’ drinking
motives on individual drinking motive patterns.
Future research should also investigate to what
extent the mediation reported in this article holds
true for particular subgroups (e.g. gender and age).
Taken together, the results of the present study
point to the possibility that the drinking motives of
others in a particular social environment exert their
influence on individual drinking by way of shaping
individual drinking motives. Unfortunately, due to
the cross-sectional nature of the presented data, this
causal chain could not be investigated. Using longi-
tudinal designs in future research, it would be possi-
ble to test to what degree motives of others causally
influence individual motives which in turn causally
influence individual drinking patterns over time.
The presented results have nevertheless some
important implications for prevention. Authors
argue that, to be effective, programmes should be
targeted at homogenous groups of adolescents who
share a particular constellation of needs and prob-
lems rather than be applied universally (Conrod,
Stewart, Comeau, & Maclean, 2006; Masterman &
Kelly, 2003). Concerning alcohol use, such needs
and problems might be expressed in the adoles-
cents’ particular drinking motives (Cooper et al.,
1995). Given the present findings of influences of
both the peer group’s motives (indirect) and the
individual’s motives (direct) on the individual ado-
lescent’s drinking behaviour, programmes that take
into account both the individual’s drinking motiva-
tions and those of other individuals in the same
social environment might be particularly effective
in reducing heavy drinking among young people.
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Author biographies
EMMANUEL KUNTSCHE, PhD, trained in
developmental and social psychology, sociology,
statistics and health sciences, is a senior researcher
and principal investigator at the SIPA (Swiss
Institute for the Prevention of Alcohol and Drug
Problems). In 2006, he received the Early Career
Scientist Award from the International Kettil
Bruun Society for Social and Epidemiological
Research on Alcohol.
SHERRY H. STEWART, PhD, is a Killam Research
Professor and Canadian Institutes of Health
Research Investigator in the Departments of
Psychiatry, Psychology, and Community Health
and Epidemiology at Dalhousie University in
Halifax, Canada, as well as a licensed clinical
psychologist in the Canadian province of Nova
Scotia.
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