Sociodemographic differences in youth alcohol sipping’s nomological network

Background: Previous research has established that certain features of personality and psychopathology (e.g., impulsivity, mood disorder, thought disorder) are associated with an increased likelihood of having sipped alcohol in youth, and substance involvement and problems into adolescence and adulthood. What is less clear from the existing literature is whether well-established risk factors of substance use are consistent across varied sociodemographic factors (i.e., gender, race/ethnicity, religious affiliation, income, parental education). Methods: We used a large, community sample of 9- and 10-year-olds (N = 11,872; 53% female) and examined whether various sociodemographic characteristics moderate the associations between sipping behavior and its various well-established correlates (e.g., impulsivity, behavioral inhibition and activation, psychopathology, parenting, and family conflict). Results: There were small mean level differences in sipping across sociodemographic characteristics. Across sociodemographic characteristics, however, sipping was fairly uniformly associated with youth-reported impulsivity, behavioral activation, prodromal psychosis symptoms, mood and externalizing disorder diagnoses, and parenting indices. Effects were sometimes slightly more pronounced among groups for which alcohol consumption is relatively nonnormative: Sipping among female youth was slightly more associated with thought disorder psychopathology than with male youth (D = .07), and was slightly more associated with some aspects of psychopathology and impulsivity for Black youth compared with White and Hispanic youth (Ds were .07 and .09). Conclusions: In broad brush, our findings suggest that the psychosocial correlates of precocious alcohol use are relatively consistent across sociodemographic factors.