Alcoholic Beverage Preferences and Associated Drinking Patterns and Risk Behaviors Among High School Youth

Background

Very little is known about the types of alcoholic beverages preferred by youth in the U.S. and the relationship between beverage preference and demographic and behavioral characteristics of these youth.

Purpose

To determine the type of alcoholic beverages consumed by adolescent drinkers and how it varies by drinking patterns.

Methods

In 2010, an analysis was performed using 2007 data from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) conducted among public school students in eight states that included a question on the type of alcohol usually consumed. Analysis was restricted to the 7723 youth who reported consuming at least one drink of alcohol in the past 30 days. Beverage type preferences were analyzed by demographic factors, drinking patterns, and other health-risk behaviors. Logistic regression analyses were conducted to examine the correlates of type-specific alcohol consumption.

Results

Liquor was the strongly preferred alcoholic beverage of choice (43.8%), followed by beer (19.2%) and malt beverages (17.4%), with a very low preference for wine (3.7%) or wine coolers (3.4%). A higher preference for liquor or beer was observed among older youth, among those with a riskier pattern of alcohol consumption (e.g., greater frequency of consumption, binge drinking, or drinking and driving), and among youth who engaged in other risk behaviors.

Conclusions

Riskier patterns of drinking and other health-risk behaviors are associated with an increased preference for hard liquor and beer. Improved surveillance of alcoholic beverage preferences among youth will enable a better understanding of the factors related to youth drinking, allowing the development of more effective interventions.

Introduction

Excessive alcohol consumption contributes to approximately 4600 deaths and 275,000 years of life lost among underage youth annually in the U.S.¹ Despite slight declines in the past decade, almost half of high school–aged youth report past-month alcohol consumption, mostly in the form of binge drinking,² and alcohol use among adolescents remains a major public health problem.2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Little is known, however, about the specific types of alcoholic beverages that underage youths consume, how this beverage-specific profile differs by drinking pattern, or what factors predict the type of alcohol that youths consume.

Identifying the types of alcoholic beverages that youth consume would contribute toward a better understanding of the motivating factors underlying underage drinking behavior.⁷ There is evidence that preferences for particular types of alcoholic beverages are associated with different drinking patterns.7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 Kuntsche et al., for example, have described wine as being consumed in moderation as a social habit, beer and spirits as most often being used to get drunk, and alcopops as occupying a middle ground.⁷ Other studies have identified spirits consumption to be related to a desire to feel the effects of alcohol quickly,8, 19 whereas beer consumption has been associated with risky drinking, including binge drinking, heavy episodic drinking, and drunk driving.9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

Because numerous evidence-based prevention strategies, including excise tax policy and alcohol sales and marketing regulation, are beverage-specific,¹⁰ understanding the specific types of alcoholic beverages consumed by young people could also inform the development of appropriate beverage-specific policy and practice interventions. In addition, understanding the relationship between the types of alcoholic beverages that youth prefer and the alcohol source, drinking location, context, and relationship with other health-risk behaviors would provide clues as to the factors that influence youth drinking behavior.

Although several studies have investigated adolescent consumption of various types of alcoholic beverages (e.g., wine, beer, spirits) in other countries,7, 8, 9 there is a paucity of such data in the U.S. There have been only two published studies on type-specific alcoholic beverage consumption among adolescents in the U.S.20, 21 In one study,²⁰ Roeber et al. reported type-specific consumption of alcoholic beverages among 9th–12th-grade students in four states in 2005 based on the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS). In the second study,²¹ Cremeens et al. used the same data set to examine the type of alcohol consumed and its relationship to binge drinking behavior. However, neither study assessed whether beverage choice was related to drinking context or other personal health-risk behaviors and neither reported the relationship between type-specific consumption and the location of drinking or the source of alcohol.

In this paper, data from the 2007 Youth Risk Behavior Survey in eight states were used to examine beverage-specific drinking patterns among U.S. adolescents. The purposes of the present study were to determine (1) the types of alcoholic beverages preferred by adolescents and how these beverage preferences differ among demographic groups and (2) how alcoholic beverage preferences differ by age, drinking patterns, and other health-risk behaviors.