Continued evaluation of the alcohol warning label legislation on two large longitudinal samples of adolescent subjects in Marion County, Indiana is proposed. The data collected to date is the only adolescent sample with warning label measures both before and after the warning label was required to appear on alcohol containers. The first data set is a repeated cross-sectional survey of 10th and 12th grade students in Marion County, Indiana begun in 1987 and continued each year thereafter. In a second data set, three cohorts of students have been measured since middle and junior high school. Warning label measures were added in the 1989-90 school year. Dependent measures are awareness of, exposure to, and memory for the warning label, perceptions of risk, alcohol use, and alcohol-related problems. More data has been received after the end of the previous grant. No new data collection funded by this grant is proposed. Early results indicate that effects on awareness, exposure, and memory have begun to level off. In both data sets, theories of the effects of repeated exposures to warning messages will be compared by testing hypotheses regarding the trend in warning label measures over time. Comprehensive models for the process linking the effects on the intermediate measures of awareness and memory on alcohol use and related problems will be estimated. In the longitudinal data from individual subjects, latent growth curve and other longitudinal models will be applied to estimate the effects of prior exposure and memory for the warning label on later alcohol use and related problems. Effects of a school drug prevention program on warning label measures will be estimated as some of the subjects were randomized to receive this program when they were in middle and junior high school. Exposure to other sources of alcohol risk information will be studied. Detailed analysis of these processes in subgroups defined by alcohol use, exposure to the warning, and other variables will be conducted. The proposed research will determine warning label effects after enough time for any effects to emerge.
