[Prevalence of binge drinking among high school students and urban contextual factors.]

Abstract

Objective: Many teenagers experiment with addictive substances such as alcohol. The objective of this study was to estimate the frequency of binge drinking among secondary school students and its relationship with sex, grade, and type of school, as well as with urban contextual factors of the school neighborhood: socioeconomic level, density of alcohol outlet premises, and tourist pressure.

Methods: This was an observational cross-sectional study. The study population were the students of 8th and 10th grade (2nd and 4th year of ESO) in the city of Barcelona in 2016. Alcohol use, sex, grade, type of school and school neighborhood were taken from the FRESC survey. The wealth of the neighborhood and tourist pressure were extracted from municipal statistics. The density of alcohol outlets was obtained by direct observation with the OHCITIES instrument. We estimated the prevalence of binge drinking (consumption of five or more units on one occasion) stratifying by age, sex and ownership of the school. We calculated a robust Poisson regression model with the individual and contextual variables and analyzed the situation of those neighborhoods with the highest prevalence of binge.

Results: The self-declared frequency of binge drinking in the last 30 days was 6.1% in this sample of 2,329 students, 2.2% in 8th grade and 10.3% in 10th grade. It was higher in boys (7%) than in girls (5.1%), and slightly higher in private subsidized schools (6.4%) than in public schools (5.5%). In the Poisson regression models, neither the coefficients of the three contextual variables nor the type of school reached statistical significance, contrary to those obtained with the individual variables of sex and year. The adjusted prevalence of binge in the 36 neighborhoods ranged from 0 to 18.2%. Comparing the contextual variables of the 8 neighborhoods with the lowest prevalence of binge with the others, both a greater density of local alcohol sales and higher tourism pressure were associated with a higher prevalence of binge drinking, while for wealth there were no significant differences.

Conclusions: The use of alcohol in early adolescence is related to individual variables such as sex and age. Urban contextual factors such as a higher tourist pressure and the density of premises that sell alcohol may exert also some influence.