Research paper
Vocational education paths, youth activities, and underage drinking in Russia: How early does the trouble start?

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Abstract

Working-class educational paths tend to be associated with elevated drinking. Little research has examined whether disproportionate alcohol use among vocationally oriented youth begins before or after the start of their vocational education. The present study analyzes a large sample of Russian middle-school students (N = 1269; mean age = 14.9), comparing the patterns of drinking among middle-schoolers oriented towards vocational educational, and their peers who do not plan a vocational education path. Results suggest that the orientation towards vocational education is associated with disproportionately high alcohol involvement among Russian middle-school students, even before they enter vocational schools. We studied if such difference could be partially explained by how youth orient towards extracurricular activities: discretionary peer time in risky contexts, reading for pleasure, working for pay, and religious activities. Reading demonstrated the strongest (negative) association with alcohol use, while religious activity unexpectedly revealed a positive (though weak) association with drinking. Research and policy implications are discussed.

Section snippets

Educational intentions and alcohol consumption

Mid-adolescents’ long-term academic intentions tend to predict, with reasonable accuracy, future educational paths that students end up taking (Eccles, Vida, & Barber, 2004). As noted, little research examined association between mid-adolescent educational intentions/aspirations and patterns of alcohol use, with existing evidence being inconsistent (Barry, Chaney, & Chaney, 2011; Crum, Storm, & Antony, 2005). Barry et al. (2011) linked adolescents’ low educational aspirations to elevated

Unstructured activities with peers (“hanging-out”)

Multiple studies have linked underage drinking to unstructured/unsupervised social activities with peers in natural environments e.g. parks, streets, and each other’s homes (Barnes et al., 2007, Crawford and Novak, 2008). According to Barnes et al. (2007), engagement in such activities are among the most important predictors of underage drinking in the U.S. Additionally, studies conducted in multiple countries have consistently tied underage drinking to peer-based activities in alcohol-serving

Respondents

From a roster of 64 middle schools in Tomsk, 16 schools were randomly selected. The sample consisted of 1269 students in their second year of study at the middle school. The mean age of the students was 14.9, (SD = 0.39), 48.7% were female, and 7.9% represented ethnic minorities (the most frequently represented ethnic minority groups were Tatars (2.4%); Azerbaijanis (2.2%) and Armenians (2%)). Sixty two percent of respondents had mothers who had completed college, 6.9% of the mothers’ highest

Descriptive analyses

Table 1 presents demographic information as well as means for the core variables in Fig. 1, Fig. 2. The amount of missing data on all variables was below 1.6%. Parental occupation data had been collected, but had large proportions of missing data; therefore their use in the analyses was unfeasible. In contrast, less than 1.6% of cases missed data on mothers’ education level; and this variable was used as a covariate. Education of parents is among the most important socio-economic predictors of

Discussion

The current study had a number of interesting and consequential results. First, we report, for the first time, that patterns of alcohol consumption diverge among middle school students orientated towards different educational paths even before these paths are actually taken. Specifically, middle-schoolers who were planning to continue to a vocational school tended to drink alcohol significantly more frequently compared to peers who planned to attend college and not a VTS. Interestingly, a

Funding disclosure

Funding for this study was provided by the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (2012–2014). No HSE officials, except the authors, had any role in the study design, collection, analysis or interpretation of the data, writing the manuscript, or the decision to submit the paper for publication.

Contributors

Authors Ivaniushina and Alexandrov designed the study and wrote the protocol, and supervised data collection and study organization. Authors Lushin and Jaccard conducted literature searches and provided summaries of previous research studies, conducted the statistical analysis, and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. All authors contributed to editing and refining the paper and have approved the final manuscript.

Conflict of interest

None of the authors are connected in any way to the alcohol, tobacco, pharmaceutical, or gaming industry. None of the authors have any conflicts of interest.

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