The purpose of the proposed project is to examine the potential simultaneous relationship between measures of advertising exposure and measures of alcohol experimentation and use among adolescents. A social psychological model of alcohol experimentation and use is integrated with a cognitive model of advertising exposure to identify the simultaneous relationship between measures of these constructs. A reduced form of the social psychological model is presented in which normative belief, expectancy-value belief, general deviance and subjective availability measures are assumed to predict alcohol experimentation and use independent of exposure to advertising. The cognitive model of advertising exposure relates the environmental exposure of individuals to alcohol ads to the attentional and memorial processes which allow subjects to retain information from these ads. On the basis of previous research by the principle investigators, it is hypothesized that the extent to which information about alcohol ads is attended to and remembered, independent of environmental exposure, will predict alcohol experimentation and use. This hypothesis will be tested using both cross-sectional and longitudinal data. The cross-sectional analyses rely upon the two theoretical models to provide the information necessary to delineate the simultaneous relationships between advertising and experimentation and use. The longitudinal analyses use the exposure measures from the cross-sectional analysis to predict subsequent rates of alcohol experimentation among youth. The long term goal of this study is to provide a causal analysis of the effects of advertising exposure that can be used as the basis for future prevention efforts.
