Alcohol intoxication and school dropout.

The aim of the study was to investigate if alcohol intoxications predict dropout from senior high school over and beyond the effect of alcohol consumption and to seek out potential confounding or mediating mechanisms in the form of a longitudinal cohort-sequential survey. The participants were a nationally representative sample of Norwegian junior and senior high school students (n=5308). Measures used were of alcohol consumption, number of intoxications, school dropout, conduct problems, drug use, friends' problem behaviour, truancy, attitude to school, educational aspirations, grades, homework, youth centrism, leisure time activities, religiosity, depression, academic self-concept, attachment to parents. Intoxications did override the effect of alcohol consumption and predicted dropout. This effect was confounded by parental attachment, whereas truancy and associating with peers high in problem behaviour mediated the effect of intoxications. Frequent alcohol intoxications increase the risk for school dropout by means of increased truancy and differential association with counternormative peers.