Binge drinking and violence in the transition to adulthood

Abstract

We analyzed data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) to test the hypothesis that binge drinking, rather than frequency of any drinking, would predict violent behavior in the transition from adolescence to adulthood (TAA). In conservative models, accounting for a host of factors relevant to the TAA, we find that binge drinking, but not frequency of drinking, is associated with violent behavior. The models included a control for nonviolent offending, conforming to studies of the “differential etiology of violence” thesis. In addition, we tested whether this association fell away among participants over the age of 21 and found that underage status did not mediate the association between binge drinking and violent behavior.