Effects of delinquency on alcohol use among juveniles in Europe: results from the ISRD-2 study

The existence of a correlation between the use of alcohol and juvenile delinquency has long been acknowledged. In order to evaluate the strength and the characteristics of this association in various cultural contexts, we analysed the data from the ISRD-2 Study regarding adolescents in 25 European countries. After recording the prevalence of alcohol consumption among young people involved in property offences and violent offences, we assessed the degree to which these types of delinquency were associated to the use of alcohol in the 25 countries considered. In addition, we attempted to ascertain the influence of belonging to various types of deviant groups on alcohol use. To this end, we used a Mokken Scale Analysis. This technique assumes the existence of an underlying latent attribute, which is represented by a set of items. The items that we used were the 6 questions that the European group had elaborated to define gang members. In the light of this analysis, we constructed a scale of "gangness" and correlated the scores with alcohol use among juveniles. We observed that alcohol consumption seems to be strongly influenced by involvement in delinquent activities