situational norms for drinking and drunkenness: trends in ... · drunkenness: trends in the us...

Addiction (1997) 92(1), 33-47

RESEARCH REPORT

Situational norms for drinking anddrunkenness: trends in the US adultpopulation, 1979-1990

THOMAS K. GREENFIELD^ & ROBIN ROOM'

^Alcohol Research Group, Westem Consortium for Public Health, USA & ^Addiction

Research Foundation, Toronto, Canada

AbstractDunking depends on time, place, situation and personal characteristics. Pattems and trends in situationaldrinking norms (subjective levels of acceptable consumption for various situations) for US adults are reported.Results are based on eight comparable normative questions from national household surveys conducted in1979 (n = 1772), 1984 (n = 5221 including Hispanic a?id black oversamples) and 1990 (n = 2058). Acrossyears and population subgroups, a correspondence in ordering of situations on acceptability of drinking andof drunkenyiess was found. There were contrasting secular trends in the acceptability of drunkenness indifferent situations: drinking ''enough to feel the effects" became more acceptable when at home but lessacceptable in several other situations, panicularly for men at a bar. For a decreasing percejitage of respondentsof both genders, it remains more acceptable for men than women to drink in bars, but gender nortns in such"wetter" situations were converging by 1990. Men remain more accepting of drinki?ig (but not drunkenness)

for "dryer" situations such as when driving, but the trend is towards reduced acceptance. Multiple regressionmodels predicting "acceptance of drinking" and "acceptance of drunkenness" scores showed fair stability inexplanatory variables over time, with drinking level and conservative Protestant affiliation (drinking) or age(drunkenness) the major contributors.

IntroductionAlthough about two-thirds of adults in theUnited States are current drinkers of alcohol,drinking is a highly enclaved activity in Americansociety (Room, 1975). The likelihood that some-one will be drinking an alcoholic beverage at aparticular moment depends not only on theirpersonal characteristics or social roles, but also

on the time, place and definition of the situation.Thus American drinking has a particular rhythmby day and hour of the week, with most drinkingtaking place in the evening hours and on week-ends (Arfken, 1988). Drinking is primarily asso-ciated witli leisure time, and drinking on the jobis often forbidden and is regarded as exceptionalfor most occupations (Hitz, 1973). Drinking or

'Also Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Califomia, San Francisco, USA.President for Research, Addiction Research Foundation, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Correspondence to: T. K. Greenfield, PhD, Alcohol Research Group, 2000 Hearst Avenue, Suite 300, Berkeley,CA 94709-2176, USA.

Submitted 9th January 1994; initial review completed 14th December 1994; final version accepted 4th March1996.

0965-2140/97/010033-15 $9.50 © Society for the Study of Addiction to Alcohol and Other Drugs

Carfax Publishing Company

34 Thomas K. Greenfield & Robin Room

appearing drunk in a public place is frequentlyforbidden by state or local law, and many heavydrinkers do a good deal of their drinking intaverns and other places set aside for drinking(Clark, 1981, 1988). Normatively speaking,drinking combines well with many other activi-ties—with watching a baseball game or tele-vision—but for some activities, such as pilotingan airplane or taking an examination, drinking isproscribed or more or less unthinkable.

Eadier analyses of US national survey datahave explored some of this variation in the time,place and manner of drinking in terms of theactual drinking behavior reported by respondentsfor various settings (Clark, 1985). An analysis ofdata from 1964 and 1984 surveys showed sub-stantial changes over time in the proportions ofrespondents who reported drinking with closefriends and friends from church, work and theneighborhood (Hilton, 1987), while a state-levelsurvey in Iowa (Fitzgerald & Mulford, 1993)between 1985 and 1989 found fair stabihty inthe relative frequency of drinking in various con-texts over time. Relatively little has been re-ported, however, conceming views of the USnational population on the tiorms governingdrinking behavior in various situations, and therehas been no consideration of time trends in suchnorms. We adopt the comtnon sociologicalmeaning of norms as informal (more than for-mal) standards or rules regulating behaviors (Jary& Jary, 1991); as applied to drinking, suchnorms have been found to vary according totime, social context and dnnking situation(Room & Roizen, 1973). Theoretically, drinkers'definitions of situations (Gaines, 1981) affectactual drinking behaviors in varying contexts(Harford & Gaines, 1981). As Room & Roizen(1973) have argued, drinking "even at its mostapparently uninhibited, obeys what MacAndrewand Edgerton (1969) call the 'within-limits'clause, remaining within socially- and situation-ally-defined boundaries" (p. 25). In this articlewe use concept of relative "wetness" or"dryness" of situations descriptively. Althoughthe terms "wet" and "dry" have been appliedwith several connotations in the literature, butoften applying to cultures or regions (Skog,1985b; Hilton, 1988; Room, 1991), by "wet"and "dry" situations we mean simply those moreconducive to heavier drinking, such as bars(Clark, 1981) versus those less so, such as whentaking care of children.

The task of classifying norms regarding a par-ticular situational context may be viewed in Ger-hardt's sociological role theory terms (seeKnibbe, Drop & Muytjens, 1987), as derivingfrom a confluence of several role influences, butespecially situation roles—"social expectationswhich facilitate social behavior in those shon-term situations in which people pursue andachieve specific objectives" (p. 464). InGerhardt's scheme, status roles such as genderwould also infiuence judgements about "appro-priateness" of drinking behavior andopportunities in a range of situations. Inaddition, position roles, based on positions some-one occupies in particular social networks, suchas parent, spouse or co-worker, create obliga-tions structuring behavior across (but alsowithin) situations. Like the tides, when rolesinvolved in a given context pull in the samedirection, the situation for that individual will be(and we surmise would also be rated as) "wetter"(or "dryer"). As Makela (1975) and others note,broad prescriptive and proscriptive norms areless useful in explaining drinking behavior than amore complex multi-dimensional framework.We therefore do not reify the relative "wetness"of a situation as specified on a survey question; itis merely a convenient uni-dimensional summaryof responses to its many features.

The present report draws on comparable re-sponses to normative questions from three na-tional surveys, conducted in 1979, 1984 and1990, to examine pattems and trends in situa-tional norms conceming drinking in the USadult population. The questions used in thisanalysis were first developed for a survey of theSan Francisco adult population in 1971 (Room& Roizen, 1973) and versions of the series havebeen used in a variety of unpublished surveysinside and outside the US. Altliough acceptanceof drinking and drunkenness in a given situationvaries greatly from one culture or subculture toanother, respondents in different groups tend toagree on the relative "wetness" of the differentsituations covered, i.e. the degree to whichdrinking at all or drinking enough to feel theeffects, is seen as permissible (Trocki, 1988).Similarly, in the 1971 San Francisco survey,heavy drinkers and abstainers also agreed on theordering of the situations by relative "wetness",although they differed substantially in the pro-portion accepting drinking in any given situation(Room & Roizen, 1973). None of the datasets

Trends in US dnnking norms 1979-1990 35

available for use in cross-country comparisonshave allowed trend analyses over a substantialperiod, the focus of this research.

MethodsThe present report is based on three probabilitysurveys of the household population of the 48conterminous US states. In the 1979 survey1772 interviews were conducted for the AlcoholResearch Group by the Response Analysis Cor-poration; the main results were reported byClark, Midanik & Knupfer (1981). Fieldwork onthe 1984 and 1990 surveys was conducted by theInstitute of Survey Research of Temple Univer-sity. The main results of the 1984 survey, inwhich 5221 interviews were conducted, can befound in a book edited by Clark & Hilton(1991). Since the 1984 study included a heavyoversampling of black and Hispanic Americans,its effective sample size, after downweighting theoversampled groups, is about the same as the1990 sample. The primary sample in 1990, usedin the present report, included 2058 adults aged18 years and over. In a multi-stage sample designwith 100 primary sampling units one adult wasrandomly chosen for interview in each householdfalling into the sample. Percentages reportedhere for each study are based on a weighting ofthe sample to attain representativeness of thenational adult population according to censusdata for the respective survey date. For statisticaltests of differences the samples were down-weighted to take account of the increases invariance stemming from use of clustered sampledesigns and weighting (Kish, 1965). Statisticalresults are calculated to be equivalent to thoseundertaken with simple random samples (effec-tive us) of 1748, 2166 and 2055 for the 1979,1984 and 1990 surveys, respectively (methodo-logical details available from the first author).

In each of the three surveys all respondentswere handed a card with four answer categories:no drinking; one or two drinks (1979: but notenough to get high); enough to feel the effectsbut not drunk (1979: OK to be high but notdrunk); getting drunk is sometimes all right. Theinterviewer then stated, "now I'll describe somesituations that people sometimes find themselvesin. For each one, please tell me how much aperson in that situation should feel free todrink... How much drinking is all right..."—witha list of situations following. Fifteen situations

were listed in 1979, eleven in 1984 and nine in1990. The present analysis is based on eightsituations asked in common across the threestudies. The situations which were included inthe studies and which survived through the threewaves were not intended to be exhaustive butrather exemplary of situations in which some orconsiderable drinking might be involved; whilethey include a few situations in which one mightexpect drinking to be strictly limited, the list as awhole IS somewhat tilted towards "wetter" situa-tions in an adult's usual daily or weekly rounds.

The methods were thus substantially compar-able in the three surveys despite some differencesin the answer cards. It is possible but seemsunlikely that the variations on the answer cardbetween 1979 and the other two surveys wouldresult in a different distribution of responses.Since the number and order of situation itemsvaried between surveys, it is also possible that thedifferences in an item's context infiuenced thepattem of responses. "When going to drive acar" was listed first in 1990, last in 1984 andseventh in 1979. Otherwise, the order of situa-tions was fairly closely matched: at a party, par-ent with small children, husband's dinner withwife, man at bar, woman at bar, co-workers atlunch and friends at home came in the sameorder in 1984 and 1990 and 1979 varied only ininserting five other situations before co-workersat lunch and friends at home. There are alsominor variations in the wording of the situation.The only substantive difference was that "whenwith friends at home" was "when friends comeover to your house or you go to theirs" in 1979.

In earlier studies, factor analyses have sug-gested a differentiation of attitudes to drinkingfrom attitudes to drunkenness, and the two setsof attitudes have proven to have different corre-lates (Allardt, 1957; Dight, 1976), supportingthe distinction in the sociological literature be-tween "permissive" and "prescriptive" drinkingnorms (see Room, 1975). For the present analy-sis, two scores were constructed: an "acceptanceof drinking" score, which summed for how manyof the eight situations the respondent acceptedany drinking at all, and an "acceptance of drunk-enness" score, which assigned one point for eachsituation in which the respondent felt it was allright to drink "enough to feel the effects", andtwo points for each situation in which it was feltthat "getting dmnk is sometimes all right". Noscore was computed for the small proponion of


respondents with missing data on any item.Three measures of current drinking behavior

and problems are also used in this analysis. Twoof these, measures of current dependence symp-toms and of current tangible consequences ofdrinking, have previously been used for compari-sons of the 1979 and 1984 studies (see Fig. 9.1in Clark & Hilton, 1991). The current depen-dence symptoms score counts the number ofpositive responses conceming the last 12 monthsto a list of nine items, while the current tangibleconsequences score sums positive responses forthe last 12 months to 12 items. (In 1979, 6% ofrespondents reponed two or more current de-pendence symptoms, and in 1984 and 1990 7%did. In all three years, 4% reponed two or morecurrent tangible consequences.) A four-level cur-rent (12-month) frequency-maximum drinkingmeasure was constructed so as to be maximallycomparable between the three surveys, each ofwhich differed somewhat in their questions onamount of drinking. "Frequent drinking" wasdefined as drinking any one of three beveragetypes—beer, wine or liquor—at least once aweek, and "high maximum drinking" wasdefined as having consumed five or more drinkson an occasion at least once in the past 12months. (For 1990 this was defined from thelargest number of drinks of any alcohol beveragethe respondent consumed in a single day. For1979 it was defined by the largest amount re-poned when the respondent was asked for wine,beer and liquor separately about the occasion inthe last year when the respondent drank themost, with a follow-up prompt for those orig-inally answering that they didn't remember. For1984 it was defined by respondents answeringthat at least "once in a while" they drank "asmany as five or six" drinks of wine, beer orliquor.) For the regression analysis in this repon,frequent, high maximum drinkers—those pass-ing both these criteria—were assigned a score of3, other frequent drinkers a score of 2, othercurrent dritikers a score of 1, and current ab-stainers a score of zero. In 1979 and 1984, 22%of the sample were frequent high maximumdrinkers, while in 1990 18% were. The pro-ponion of current abstainers fell from 33% in1979 to 31% in 1984, and then rose to 35% in1990.

Nine dichotomous or quasicontinuous demo-graphic variables were also used in the analysis.In the dichotomous variables, respondents were

coded 0 unless they fell in the following cate-gories, coded 1: males for gender, wet region forUS region (New England, Mid-Atlantic, EastNonh Central, West Nonh Central, Pacific—seechapter 17 in Clark & Hilton, 1991); mamed formantal status; conservative Protestant for re-ligion (Baptist, Fundamentalist, Pentecostal,Mormon, Seventh-Day Adventist, Jehovah'sWitness); black American for black ethnicity (in-cluding black Hispanics); and Hispanic Ameri-can for Hispanic ethnicity (including blackHispanics). Year of age was used as the agevariable, the full range of income categories forincome (10 categories in 1984 and 1990, 11 in1979), and the full range of education categoriesfor education (eight categories in 1979 and1984, 17 in 1990).

Analysis of differences over time in the tables(or between genders, when noted in the text) inrates of acceptance of any drinking and of drink-ing enough to feel the effects or more used thePearson /"-square test; tests of linear trendsacross time given in the text as relevant used theMantel-Haenszel /^-square test (Fleiss, 1981).Analyses took account of the reduction in effec-tive sample size due to multi-stage sampling asdescribed earlier. The procedure is conservativefor the gender-specific analyses and for deter-mining significance of regression coefficients inmodels predicting acceptance of drinking andacceptance of drunkenness.

ResultsTable 1 compares the responses on situationalnorms conceming any drinking at all in the1979, 1984 and 1990 surveys. In all three years,a strong majority of Americans agreed that somedrinking is all right for each of the first fivesituations listed, while only one-third or lessagreed to any drinking for the last three situa-tions. What Americans largely agree on as desir-able drinking behavior is thus considerably morerestrictive than the legal rules conceming drink-ing. For example, "one or two drinks" wouldgenerally be legally acceptable anywhere in theUS for someone over the age of 21 years whowas going to drive a car.

Although the differences are often not great,males are consistently more accepting ofdrinking in a given situation than females(gender tests not shown). With survey yearspooled, gender differences were all significant

Trends in US drinking norms 1979-1990 37

00

Tf 00

00

o00

Cl CJ CJCO CO 00

o00

^ CJ00 00

00C) \O00 00 00

00

00oo

00

0000

COin ^Cl CJ

O ClM 00

Tf00

i nCO o00

' ^00 00

O CJr^ CJ

00

CO

CO

in00

00Cl00

CJ 00CJ —'

•ri in Cl 0000 m rn CJ

CJ

—.l-l

oB

l-l

ra

UIO

•A

offl

6O ffl

D, -v

< <

.S c

^ S V

" O


(p < 0.01-p < 0.00001), although comparisonsby year indicated that the differences becamenon-sigtiificant for four of five of the wet situ-tions by 1990, with a gender difference remain-ing only for at home with friends (p<0.05). Inthe aggregate, however, men and women agreefairly closely on the normative ordering of thesituations. Among both men and women, ineach year, fewer see it as appropriate for womento drink with friends at a bar than for a man;for a small percentage of both males and fe-males—a fraction which is slowly decreasingover time—it is still more acceptable for a manthan for a woman to be drinking in a bar at all.

For the first two situations and the fifth in thetable, there is no discernible trend between1979 and 1990 in acceptance of any drinking.Having at least a drink or two in these situa-tions remains acceptable behavior for 80-88%of American adults. For the third and fourthsituations there is some shift in the 1980s to-wards greater acceptance of drinking, with theshift particularly marked among women.Whereas women had been noticeably less ac-cepting of drinking in 1979 for a woman out ata bar with friends (and when with friends athotne) than for a man at a bar with friends,there is considerable convergence in the distri-butions by 1990.

A substantial (and statistically significant) dif-ference between the genders remains, however,for the three situations where only a minorityapprove of drinking. For two of the three—co-workers out to lunch, and when going to drive acar—there has been a sharp shift towards lessacceptability between 1979 and 1984, withsomething of a rebound toward greater accept-ability since; for both genders, as indicated bythe Mantel-Haenszel test, despite the rebound,the linear secular trend during the 1980s issignificant for driving but not lunch with co-workers. The early 1980s in the US were theheyday of media attention to Mothers AgainstDrunk Driving (MADD) and other grassrootscampaigns against drinking-driving, and whilethis focus may have attenuated it has not en-tirely abated. It is possible that the significantdip in acceptance of drinking at lunch with co-workers is a delayed response to the politicaldiscussion in the late 1970s of whether the"three-martini lunch" was a legitimate tax-deductible business expense, which did not re-ceive much subsequent attention in the 1980s.

Although there has been rather little media at-tention to or discussion of drinking by parentsspending time with small children, acceptanceof drinking in this situation has steadily andsignificantly dropped in the 1980s for both gen-ders so that this is now the most unacceptablesituation for any drinking. The age distributionsof drinking patterns and of parents of smallchildren, and the time-cycles of parenthood andof drinking, make it likely that this norm isoften breached in practice, especially by men.

Table 2 shows the proportions of respondentsaccepting that it is all right to feel the effects orto be drunk in each situation (only a smallminority of respondents accept that it is all rightto be drunk in any of the situations). In allthree years, hardly anyone, male or female, ac-cepts that it is all right to drink enough to feelthe effects in the three "driest" situations.

For four of the five "wetter" situations, theproportion accepting drinking at least enough tofeel the effects has declined between 1979 and1990. While acceptance of drinking at all hasbeen stable or has even slightly increased forthese situations, there has been a substantialand significant decline in the acceptability ofhaving more than one or two drinks (all Man-tel-Haenszel test p s ^ 0.001). The exception tothis trend is "when with friends at home". Herethe trend has actually been in the opposite di-rection: for both genders, acceptance of feelingthe effects of drinking has steadily grown forthis situation during the 1980s (both Mantel-Haenszel test p s ^ 0.0001). By 1990, "at homewith friends" is the most accepted situation fordrinking enough to feel the effects, overall andfor each sex, while a decade earlier, heavierdrinking was most acceptable in bars (men) orothers' parties (women). On the face of it, one'sown home is differentiated from the other"wetter" situations in two ways: the drinking ismore clearly in a private location, and there isless likely to be a need to travel after the drink-ing occasion—hence lower actual and perceivedrisk to self (the host) from drunk driving.

Trends in the sample as a whole are repli-cated within each gender. Consistently, how-ever, whether in 1979, 1984 or 1990, males areconsiderably more accepting than females ofdrinking enough to feel the effects in the fourwettest situations (all p s ^ 0.0001 except 1979party at someone else's home, p-0.0002).Gender differences in drinking norms are thus


I

I

ca

00

CO

r-

o00

ON

ON

00

<N

**

^ CN

00 o —

00

00

ON

o

in

inino<N

CN

•00

00

*o

COCN

'*f^

O 00 00 CN

CN

CN -^•N CN

— t^

00 00 i n oCN(N

u'ti

houl

d;r

son

s

a

<

O4->

J I !

enou

ghdr

ink

ol-l

'a?u.Ofi

ts (

or ]

•5

• (u

oq j

at s

ompa

rty

«4 - 1

B

se's

ho

l - l

njXi

out

ata

man

uO

en

d

th f

rie:

njX)

(-1

an o

ut

Eo&

iHO

c

th fr

ie]

(L)

6o

frie

ndn

wit

h

IH

bo

'?

and

haa

husb

o

his

wil

t w

ith

o

o

)-•NX

c

ccd

a


• %

I

-a;

00

O

O

GO

1O

H

00

-o

ininoCM

00

COC3N

ON

OO

ON

oo

Ov

o-

in 00ON Ov

inON

Ov

00ON

(N

00in

** MMo ^ c:>\Q CN i-H

CO

CJOvi n

vOi n

ONi n

i n •—1 r-i nON O

GO

00

in00

t -o •*00 00

0000

00

OO

in00

00 00

ro

CJ 00 —CJ —' C^

in CJ ooCO fO CJ

m o-.... CO

inX

ON

CJ 00 ro 00

ro00

r i •^ i n ONfO OJ rO

in o

in 00 in

o CJ in CO

co

Si

•s<1>

& C O

-ri n V

XI o

£ 3 o§ So^ "i yrt

-S .S ;::oj '3 oJ3 S V


stronger at the level of drinking to feel the effectsthan at the level of drinking at all.

In Table 3 we tum to differences by drinkingpatterns in situational norms for drinking.Respondents were asked the questions in termsof how much a generalized "person should feelfree to drink" in each situation, so that in prin-ciple the answers are not about the respondent'srules for his or her ozvti drinking. However,Table 3 shows that there are nevertheless bigdifferences between two groups at opposite endsof the drinking spectrum—current abstainersand frequent high-maximum drinkers (i.e. thosewho drink at least weekly and sometimes five ormore drinks)—in their general acceptance ofdrinking. Almost all heavier drinkers in all threesurveys accept drinking in each of the five"wetter" situations, while only between 41% and66% of abstainers do. Abstainers are somewhatmore likely than the population as a whole todiscriminate between a man's and a woman'sdrinking at a bar, while few heavier drinkersmake such a distinction.

Broadly speaking, abstainers becamesignificantly more accepting between 1979 and1990 of some drinking in wetter situations. Thusthe distributions on the acceptance of drinkingscore (bottom of Table 3) show that the pro-portion of abstainers insisting on no drinking inany situation fell between 1979 and 1990 bymore than 10%. Over the whole decade, how-ever, abstainers showed little net change in ac-ceptance of drinking in the "dryer" situations.

Heavier drinkers, on the other hand, showed asignificant shift towards less acceptance of anydrinking in "dryer" situations, particularly whengoing to drive (Mantel-Haenszel test p < 0.0001)and parents spending time with small children(Mantel-Haenszel test/>< 0.01), but no changefor "wetter" situations where the acceptance wasnear total throughout. The fall-off in the pro-portion of heavier drinkers accepting any drink-ing at co-worker lunches was fairly dramaticbetween 1979 and 1984, but by 1990 had all butattained its former level of acceptance (Mantel-Haenszel test p = 0.44, NS). The proportion ofheavier drinkers who thought some drinking wasall right in all eight situations fell by almostone-half.

The U-shaped trend for lunchtime drinkersand for drinking-driving found in the total sam-ple, with acceptance of drinking at a nadir in1984, held also both for abstainers and for heav-

ier drinkers. Despite some reversal in levels ofacceptance of drinking when going to drive, thetime trend toward reduced acceptance overallremained substantial (a 10% decline) and highlysignificant (Mantel-Haenszel test/)< 0.00001).

Overall, the direction of changes in normativeresponses for abstainers and for heavier drinkersis towards a greater normative consensus, withabstainers and heavier drinkers closer to agree-ment on situational norms on drinking at all in1990 than in 1979. Their normative positions,however, remain quite far apart. Overall, thechanges tend to increase the differentiation ofsituations in terms of the acceptability of drink-ing: abstainers are moving towards acceptingdrinking in "wetter" situations, while heavierdrinkers are moving towards proscribing drink-ing in "dryer" situations.

Abstainers show no changes on acceptance offeeling the effects of drinldng (Table 4), exceptthat even among them, as in the rest of thepopulation, there has been increasing acceptanceof feeling the effects when drinking with friendsat home (Mantel-Haenszel test p < 0.0001).Heavier drinkers show a sharper rise (from 49%to 73%) than the whole population (20-31%) inthe proportion accepting feeling the effects ofdrinking when with friends at home. Amongheavier drinkers, this is now the social situationwhere heavier drinking is most acceptable. Evenamong heavier drinkers, by 1990 only a tinyproportion accept feeling the effects when goingto drive a car.

Adding across all situations, the acceptance ofdrunkenness (bottom of Table 4) among heavierdrinkers shows some signs of increase between1979 and 1990. Abstainers also show a shghtmovement in the same direction, although thereis very little (and not a significant) net change inthe population as a whole. The situation-specificshifts in norms we have outlined leave little neteffect on this global measure of acceptance ofdrunkenness.

Tables 5 and 6 show the results of multipleregressions on acceptance of drinking score(Table 5) and the acceptance of drunkemiessscore (Table 6). With these analyses, we canexamine the demographic predictors of accept-ance of drinking and drunkenness, and whetherthese changed in the course of the 1980s. Themultiple Rs in Table 5 imply that the proportionof the variance (or R^) in acceptance of drinkingwhich can be accounted for by demographic


IC

•a

B

c

3

oO\Ov

00ON

oOv

00

loH

00roCO

Ov

in

+ 4-f +

OO OO COo in [—

ro 00

00

ro

oCO

CO

00in

in Ovin -^

¥*

00 ro

CO

CMONin

ro

oONOv

inin

oCN

•K

MvOCJ

*

oCO ro •—'ca CO

VO

00

00CN

ClCO

ro

00ro

in oCl CN

CJ

CJca

00

CJ in CO

00

CO

o o

CJ

CJ

CN CJ CJro ro CN

vO CO O ^CJ CO Cl CJ

in CNro CN

CN 00

CO CI--- 00

ro CJ ro-H 00

in Ov

Ov—' in

CO

ca

00 .^

U O

V

g 3 O§ go^ Vffl

ffl ? V

.> n

in

o


2

I.3

5

•a

I

bb -

oEu

Q

OONON

COON

ON

OONO-

COOS

ON

oOS

00ON

ON

O^

md

<N

—• r -

o o

** ¥r o ^ r~"o — o — o o

00 — —rO O O

o o o o o o o o o o o oII I I I I

• * * -K* * * * -I +

O O ' O X Q O C O r r r ' ^ ' O ^ O O Oq — q q q o — qq- ^ o od o d d o d d o d d d o

**

-^ r- oo o ^

^ -H [^ 00 rOO O O O O O O

o o o o o o o o o o o o

ind

do oO -H

* * ** * *

•O 00 00 COo o o o o o ^

oo

r-oo1

**o—o

+•—1 T fCJ Oo o

<—c

oo

r-oo1

*00oo

oo1

+t n

o

* *

00

d00 r^— o

-K *

M <— i n •i^ 00—' ^ OJ O O

o o o o o o o o o

ind

• - VJJ T3

CQ

^ It n

3 h '

5 c c c

a

e

Oo9oV

ooo

I

rt q

fG VK *U *

c .« in

o o1V


a

2;-J5

:

I

IE

2i. • O H

3aH

3 9

"a E

E ^

J3a

oONON

COON

o-

oOS

OS

oONON

00ON

in

d

00in

q ^ q q q q q q q o i i N Od d d d d d d d d d d d

i nf--o

o OOS

o o

**ONO O

. — 1

o+ +

— in ro (N r•1 O

in

dCD ^ CD

I I I

o o o o o o o o o o oII I I 1 I I

o o o o o o o o o o oI I I I I

0 0 ^ -O O

I I I I

r- -H iTi ^H NO - ^ INO O O

E ^ c

& 2

I I

XI u

C C C1 ) OJ <U

I3 '-'

pa

'a

C!3 •

sso oa oo 9^ o

•53 +•s +

|i

TO Q

rt O

eft \ /a; V

o *C .«cu in

a V


variables has tended to drop. Not being a con-servative Protestant has become the strongestpredictor of acceptance of drinking in 1990,while living in a wet region appears to be ofdeclining importance. Other demographics tendto stay at about the same relative strength aspredictors of acceptance of drinking, with higherincome and lower age as the next strongest pre-dictors after conservative Protestant in 1990.Adding the frequency-maximum drinking mea-sure to the equation allows us to examine howwell demographic variables predict acceptance ofdrinking, roughly controlling for drinking pat-tern. While the drinking measure is strongly re-lated to acceptance of drinking and somewhatincreases the multiple R, the main change to thebeta weights for the demographics is a shghtdampening of their predictive power. Addingdependence symptoms and tangible conse-quences to the equation has essentially no fur-ther effect.

The multiple Rs in Table 6 for the demo-graphic prediction of acceptance of drunkennessare slightly lower than for acceptance of drinkingand also tend to decline over time. The strongestpredictors of positive attitudes to drunkennessare being male and young, with being unmarriedand being conservative Protestant playing a sec-ondary, diminished role. Controlling for drinkingpatterns again mutes the beta-weights for demo-graphics, leaving youth as the main demographiccharacteristic adding much to the prediction ofattitudes to drunkenness from drinking patterns.For attitudes to drunkenness, current depen-dence symptoms do make a modest additionalcontribution to the explained variance, to someextent at the expense of drinking patterns. Otherthan a slight tendency for youth's predictivepower to decline over time, there is little evi-dence of a secular change in the pattern ofdemographic contributors.

DiscussionHie overall impression from the trends in situa-tional norms on drinking and drunkenness is ofa considerable stability in the normative struc-ture of American drinking. The patterns supportthe idea that drinking is a highly enclaved activityin social life: there are times and occasions whendrinking and perhaps even drunkenness is appro-priate, and times when they are not, and there isa good deal of normative consensus on the rela-

tive "wemess" of situations, even though abso-lute rates of acceptance vary in populationsubgroups. An imponant divergence from stabil-ity, however, is some evidence of a limited con-vergence between abstainers and heavierdrinkers in the 1980s in norms on the acceptabil-ity of drinking, with more heavier drinkers pro-scribing dnnking in "dryer" situations, and moreabstainers accepting drinking in "wetter" situa-tions. The fact that the amount of variance ex-plained by demographic variables in predictingacceptance of drinking and of drunkenness hasbeen dropping also supports the idea of a dnfttowards somewhat greater homogeneity betweendifferent population subgroups in attitudes todrinking and drunkenness, an exception beingconservative Protestants, whose lack of accept-ance of drinking in most situations increasinglystands out.

A striking feature of the present cross-sectionaltrend data, as of previous cross-national studies,IS the close correspondence from one ranking toanother in the ordering of situations on accept-ability of dnnking and of drunkenness (in otherwords, whether examined across years or acrosspopulation subgroups). This result parallels thefinding of Fitzgerald & Mulford (1993) in theState of Iowa over a shorter period (1985-89) ofconsistencies in the rank order of drinking fre-quencies in various drinking places over time. Inthis respect, the main secular trend in the US isthe move of drinking "when with friends athome" up in the rankings, in particular for ac-ceptance of drunkenness, but also to some extentfor acceptance of drinking. This shift reflectssome changes in the absolute rates of acceptanceof drinking and drunkenness.

On the evidence of Tables 1 and 2, the par-ticular form which normative change on drinkinghas taken in the 1980s is a diminished accept-ability of any drinking in "dryer" but not in"wetter" situations, and of heavier drinking inpublic situations or in situations which will re-quire travel afterwards. Reductions of the rangeof situations in which drinking anything at all isaccepted parallels the continued downturn ofalcohol consumption that began in the early1980s and has been continuing through 1990 inthe US (Midanik & Clark, 1994). Acceptance ofheavier drinking, even in "wetter" situations, isdiminished except in the case of drinking whenwith friends at home, which is more acceptedoverall and by all subgroups.


These associational results, based on a shortseries of cross-sectional surveys, cannot answerquestions regarding causal direction. However,the results suggest an important attitudinaldimension of drinking pattern that must beviewed as context specific. Since drinking envi-ronments affect risks of problems such as drunkdriving, temporal changes in national normstructures relating drinking to situations maymediate changes in the population's aggregaterisk for specific problems. Situational norms de-serve further study in stronger, longitudinaldesigns.

The pattern of reduced normative acceptanceof heavier drinking in "wetter" situations andgreater acceptance at home pushes the drinkingmore firmly into enclaved, "time-out" situations,hidden from the public, without the responsi-bility of subsequent driving or other travel^ butalthough "drinking with friends at home" is outof the public eye and somewhat insulated fromthe risk of traffic casualties (for the host at least),it is of course easily observed by family andfriends. This shift in the normative firaming ofheavy drinking towards drinking in the home isconcurrent with, and may be related to, the risereported by respondents in rates of pressuresfrom family members to reduce drinking (Room,Greenfield & Weisner, 1991). These findings areconsistent with the hypothesis that in an era ofdeclining per-capita consumption with renewedtalk of temperance, relatively more alcohol ispurchased for home consumption, while varioussocial forces including heightened awareness ofnegative consequences and family interactionsexert a press toward reduced drinking in higher-risk and higher-cost situations. Since we knowthat the "outcome" is a reduction in per capitaconsumption, observed across almost all demo-graphic subgroups (a possible exception beingHispanic individuals, see Midanik & Clark,1994), the more "restrictive" situational normsmay well provide an accessible index of the typeof influences envisioned in Skog's (1985a) theoryof the collectivity of drinking cultures.

AcknowledgementPreparation of this paper was supported by aNational Alcohol Research Center grant (AA-05595) from the US National Institute on Al-cohol Abuse and Alcoholism to the Alcohol

Research Group, Western Consortium for PublicHealth. Thanks are due to Gloria Bocian andJoseph Hernandez for programming and PaulLemmens for his useful suggestions on an earlierdraft.

ReferencesALLARDT, E . (1957) Drinking norms and drinking

habits, in: ALLARDT, E. , MARKKANEN, T . & TAKALA,M. (Eds) Drinking and Dnnkers: three papers in behav-ioral sciences, pp. 7-109 (Helsinki, Finnish Foun-dation for Alcohol Studies).

ARFKEN, C . L . (1988) Temporal pattern of alcoholconsumption in the United States, Alcoholism: Clini-cal and Experimental Research, 12, 137-142.

CLJVRK, W . B . (1981) Public drinking contexts: barsand taverns, in: HARFORD, T . C . & GATNES, L . S.(Eds) Social Dnnking Contexts, Proceedings of a Work-shop., pp. 8-33 (NIAAA Research Monograph 7,DHHS Publication No. (ADM)82-1097 (Washing-ton, DC, GPO, 17-19 September, 1979).

CLARK, W . B . (1985) Alcohol use in various settings,in: SINGLE, E . & STORM, T . (Eds) Public Dnnking andPublic Policy, pp. 49-70 (Toronto, Addiction Re-search Foundation of Ontario).

CLARK, W. B. (1988) Places of drinking: a comparativeanalysis. Contemporary Dmg Problems, 15, 399-446.

CLARK, W . B . & HILTON, M . (Ed.) (1991) Alcohol inAmerica: drinking practices and problems (Albany, NY,State University of New York Press).

CLARK, W . B., MIDANIK, L. & KNUPFER, G . (1981)Report on the 1979 National Survey: revised. ReportNo. C35 (Berkeley, CA, Alcohol Research Group).

DiGHT, S. (1976) Scottish Drinking Habits: a surveycarried out for the Scottish Home and Health Depart-ment (London, HMSO, Office of Population Cen-suses and Surveys).

FITZGERALD, J. L. & MULFORD, H . A. (1993) Alcoholavailability, drinking contexts and drinking prob-lems: the Iowa experience, Joumal of Studies onAlcohol, 54, 320-325.

FLEISS, J. L . (1981) Statistical Methods for Rates andProportiofis (New York, Wiley).

GAINES, L . S. (1981) Cognition and the environment:Implications for a self-awareness theory of drinking,in: HARFORD, T . C . & GAINES, L . S. (Eds) SocialDrinking Contexts, Proceedings of a Workshop, pp.138-154 (Washington, DC, GPO, 17-19 Septem-ber, 1979).

HARFORD, T . C . & GAINES, L. , S. (Ed.) (1981) SocialDrinking Contexts, Proceedings of a Workshop, Re-search Monograph No. 7, DHHS Publication No.(ADM)81-1097 (Washington, DC, GPO. 17-19September, 1979).

HILTON, M . E . (1987) The presence of alcohol in foursituations: survey results from 1964 and 1984, Inter-national Joumal of the Addictions, 22, 487—495.

HILTON, M . E . (1988) Regional diversity in UnitedStates drinking practices, British Journal of Addiction,83, 519-532.

HiTZ, D. (1973) Drunken sailors and others: drinkingproblems in specific occupations. Quarterly Joumal ofStudies on Alcohol, 34, 469-505.


JARY, D . & JARY, J. (1991) TTie HarperCollins Dictionaryof Sociology (New York, NY, HarperPerennial).

KJSH, L. (1965) Sun'ey Sampling (New York, Wiley).KNIBBE, R. A. . DROP, M . J. & MUYTTENS, A. (1987)

Correlates of stages in the progression from everydaydrinking to problem drinking. Social Science andMedicine, 24, 463-473.

MACANDREW, C . & EDGERTON, R. B . (1969) DruiikenComportment: a social explanation (Chicago, AldinePublishing).

MAKELA, K . (1975) Consumption level and culturaldrinking patterns as determinants of alcohol prob-lems, Joumal of Drug Issues, 5, 344-357.

MIDANIK, L . T . & CLARK, W . B . (1994) The demo-graphic distribution of U.S. drinking patterns in1990: Descriptions and trends from 1984, AmericanJoumal of Public Health, 84, 1218-1222.

ROOM, R. (1975) Normative perspectives on alcoholuse and problems, Joumal of Drug Issues, 5, 358-368.

ROOM, R. (1991) Starting on the fringe: studying al-cohol in a wet generation, in: EDWARDS, G . (Ed.)

Addictions: personal influences and scientific movements,pp. 179-185 (London and New Brunswick, Trans-action Publishers).

ROOM, R., GREENFIELD, T . & WEISNER, C . (1991) Peo-ple who might have liked you to drink less: changingresponses to drinking by U.S. family members andfriends, \ 979-1990, Contemporary Drug Problems, 18,573-595.

ROOM, R. & ROIZEN, R. (1973) Some notes on thestudy of drinking contexts. Drinking and Drug Prac-tices Surveyor, 8, 25-32.

SKOG, O.-J. (1985a) The collectivity of drinking cul-tures: a theory of the distribution of alcohol con-sumption, British Joumal of Addiction, 80, 83-99.

SKOG, O.-J. (1985b) The wetness of drinking cultures:a key variable in epidemiology of alcoholic livercirrhosis, Acta Medica Scandinavica, 703, 157-184.

TROCKI, K. F . (1988) Situational drinking behaviorand situational drinking norms, Dnnking and DrugPractices Surveyor, 22, 59 (abstract).

situational norms for drinking and drunkenness: trends in ... · drunkenness: trends in the us...

Documents