Authors: Allan Wyllie, Jia Fang Zhang & Sally Casswell
Title: Responses to televised alcohol advertisements associated with drinking behaviour of 10-17-years-olds.
Journal: Addiction, 1998, 93 (3), 361-371.

Objective: To examine the response to alcohol advertisement and possible associations with drinking behaviour and future drinking expectations among young people in New Zealand.

Design: Cross-sectional study, face to face interviews, with selection based on random cluster sampling.

Setting: Homes in the three largest urban areas in New Zealand with response rate of 54%.

Participants: 10-17-year-old respondents in a cross-sectional survey (N = 500) in 1993.

Methods: Non-recursive structural equation modelling is used to examine whether there are reciprocal paths of influence to test the hypothesized causal model (SEM does not establish causality). Respondents responded to a photograph of the most frequently advertised campaign (and sport sponsorship with most exposure). Respondents were asked how often they had seen the advertisement and how attractive they rated the advertisement. The effect of the liking of advertisements on drinking behaviour was controlled for expectancies on alcohol and peer approval, parental approval of drinking and perceived peer and parents drinking behaviour. The sample has been split between 10-13 year olds and 14-17 year olds as a result of differences between these groups.

Findings: The results show that a higher attractiveness of the advertisements increases the frequency of drinking (B standardized = .013, SE=.12 with p<.05) and increases the expectancy of drinking alcohol at age 20 (B standardized = .37, SE=.23 with p<.05). There is no support for a reciprocal effect.

Conclusion Authors: The results show a tentative support that positive responses to alcohol advertisement contribute to an increase in the frequency of current and expected future drinking. This is only a tentative conclusion since no causality can be established by data with a cross-sectional design.

Comments EUCAM: This study is one of the first studies which examine not the amount of advertisement that young people are exposed to but their perception of these advertisements. The conclusions of this publication could be integrated in future research by taken into account the liking of advertisements as a mediating effect between the exposure to advertisements and drinking behaviour. See also the article of Casswell & Zhang (1998) for a longitudinal study with older respondents but with strong similarities.