The relative association of collective efficacy in school and neighborhood contexts with adolescent alcohol use

Abstract

Background: It is unclear whether either neighborhood collective efficacy or school collective efficacy is associated with adolescent alcohol use. This study aimed to examine the relative contributions of collective efficacy, both in school and in the neighborhood contexts, to alcohol use among Japanese adolescents. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in public high schools across Okinawa and Ibaraki Prefectures in Japan in 2016. The study participants consisted of 3,291 students in grades 10 through 12 cross-nested in 51 schools and 107 neighborhoods. Alcohol use was measured as current alcohol drinking, which was defined as self-reported drinking on at least 1 day in the past 30 days. Collective efficacy was measured using scales of social cohesion and informal social control in school and the neighborhood. Contextual-level collective efficacy was measured using aggregated school-level and neighborhood-level individual responses, respectively. We used non-hierarchical multilevel models to fit the cross-nested data. Results: Significant variation in alcohol use was shown between schools but not between neighborhoods. After adjusting for covariates, school collective efficacy at individual- and contextual-levels was protectively associated with alcohol drinking (odds ratio [OR] for the increase of one standard deviation from the mean 0.72; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.63–0.82 and OR 0.61; 95% CI, 0.49–0.75, respectively), whereas neighborhood collective efficacy at individual- and contextual-levels was not associated with alcohol consumption. Conclusion: The school-level associations of collective efficacy with adolescent alcohol use may have the greater impact than the neighborhood-level associations. Adolescent drinking prevention efforts should include enhancing school collective efficacy.