Understanding Factors Affecting Drinking Behavior: An Essay On Planned Behaviour Therapy And Alcohol Consumption.

Determinants of Intention

Discuss about the Planned Behaviour Therapy and Alcohol Consumption.

Alcohol consumption is among the main risk factors of non-communicable disease and health conditions. Therefore, it is a main public health research which has ignited a lot of research to understand reasons behind people drinking and possible ways of controlling binge drinking. Several researchers have developed effective theories on alcohol consumption which has been of great importance and assistance in advising alcoholics and young adults to reduce levels of drinking. It has been identified that there are social, psychological, economic and environmental factors affect the decision of an individual, hence changes in their behaviours. This indicates that the behaviours of a person can change based on their current financial status, their places of residents, people they interact with, places of work among other factors. Past experiences can also be used to shape a person’s future on alcohol consumption – which might be misused for both chronic and acute use. For instance, an individual who has been brought up a family where the parents were drunkards have a higher risk of being an alcohol user as compared to a person whose parents do not take alcohol.

Despite the environmental, economic and environmental factors affecting the intentions and willingness to take alcohol, human behaviour takes a critical role in influencing the decision of a person. Just as the human behaviour has been used to predict health outcomes, in the same way, it can be used to determine alcohol consumption levels and intentions. Further, Ajzen (1991), argued that human behaviour is majorly determined by the willingness and intentions to perform a certain behaviour. As a result of a combination of motivation, differences in personalities and upbringing, human behaviour differs significantly based on these variations. Three factors have been identified as the determinants of intention, which include subjective norm, perceived behavioural control and attitudes. In this manner, an individual will be much comfortable to engage in behaviour which is much accepted by peers among people in conduct. Therefore, as a result of justification based on their view, these behaviours will be absorbed.

Individuals vary in their level of self-control, hence the perceived behavioural control. Based on the standards of perceived behavioural control, people will act differently in homogenous situations – and this determined by the personalities, which have different morals and values. There has been lots of question on the variability of alcohol use among different social classes and gender among other categories. In the Multinational Genacis Project, it was found that high levels of drinking were significantly high for the males compared to the females(Wilsnack, Wilsnack, Kristjanson, Vogeltanz-Holm, & Gmel, 2009). Further, it was found that women had a high prevalence of abstaining from alcohol compared to the males. This shows that men are higher risks of being alcoholics compared to their female’s counterparts. These results were also consistent even after controlling for age categories, hence affirming that women had higher rates of having stopped from drinking in comparison to the males. Older individuals had a higher frequency of drinking for both women and men. However, the levels of drinking did not significantly reduce with age. Therefore, this study will assess the relationship between Planned Behaviour Therapy and alcohol consumption.

Results: Descriptive Statistics

Is there a relationship between planned behaviour and alcohol consumption?

1. Are the attitudes, subjective norms (or social norms), and perceived behavioural control all related to general community members intention to use alcohol?
2. Can people’s intentions to use alcohol tell us anything about problematic alcohol use?
3. Is there any evidence to suggest males and females differ in attitudes, subjective norms or perceived behavioural control?

1. Null hypothesis: There are no significant correlations between intentions to use alcohol and attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control.

Alternative hypothesis: There is a significant correlation between intentions to use alcohol and attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control.

2. Null hypothesis: There are no significant correlations between intentions to use alcohol and depression, anxiety and stress levels.

Alternative hypothesis: There are significant correlations between intentions to use alcohol and depression, anxiety and stress levels.

3. Null hypothesis: There is no significant difference in means of attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control between males and females.

Alternative hypothesis: There is a significant difference in means of attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control between males and females.

Table 1: Cross tabulation of Employment status and Education level by Gender

Table 2: Summary Statistics

Table 3: Summary statistics by gender

Table 4: Pearson correlations of Alcohol use intentions, Attitudes, Subjective Norms and Perceived Behavioural Control

Table 5: Pearson's Correlation test for Alcohol use intentions, and depression, Anxiety and Stress levels

Table 6: Homogeneity test

Table 7: Independent t-test for gender

Intentions to use alcohol have been researched and findings have shown that they correlate with personal attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control. Having higher favourable attitudes towards alcohol consumption will be associated with high intake of alcohol and vice versa. According to this study, the attitude was significantly positively associated with mean intentions to use alcohol with a Pearson’s correlation coefficient of 0.288 (p-value < 0.001). These results are in line with the findings of Cooke, Sniehotta and Schüz (2007), who found that alcohol was a significant modifier of binge drinking. Further, they found that modification of attitudes would significantly reduce levels of drinking among undergraduate students. Further, subjective norms have been categorised as the significant determination of behaviours and decision made by individuals. People are influenced by their significant others such as parents, friends and siblings among others(Hale, Householder, & Greene, 2003). Based on the theory of planned actions, subjective norms were found to be significantly correlated with intentions to use alcohol with a Pearson’s correlation coefficient of 0.376 (p-value < 0.001). Similarly, it was also found that perceived behavioural control is positively related to the intentions to use alcohol (Pearson’s coefficient = 0.297, p-value < 0.001). Between attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control, Subjective norms had the strongest correlation with intentions to use alcohol.

Unproved theories have been documented on the reason of taking alcohol. Among these reasons is to reduce stress levels, which puts the depressed and stressed individuals in a greater risk of engaging in alcohol drinking behaviours. Due to these theories, people would take alcohol with the intentions of reducing their stress levels. According to this study, it was found that anxiety (Pearson’s correlation = 0.123, p-value = 0.05), depression (Pearson’s correlation = 0.055, p-value = 0.386) and stress (Pearson’s correlation = 0.054, p-value = 0.392) levels were not significantly associated with the intentions to use alcohol. Among these three negative effects, anxiety was the most correlated with intentions to use alcohol, which had a positive correlation of 0.123 and a p-value of 0.05, indicating that it is statistically significant at 90% confidence level. However, depression and stress levels had a weak correlation with coefficients of 0.055 and 0.054 respectively.

Studies have found that there are significant variations between males and females on alcohol and intentions to use alcohol. Also, significant differences in the prevalence of alcohol use have been found, showing that women take less alcohol on average and have higher levels of abstinence from alcoholic substances(Bekman et al., 2011; Gire, 2002). In this study, it was found that data on attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control were homogenous after comparing males and females. Therefore, independent tests of equal variances were used to test differences in means of attitude subjective norms and perceived behavioural control among males and females. It was found that there were a significant different means of attitude levels on alcohol use between men and women (p-value = 0.027). On average, males attitudes were 2.997 compared to females with 2.7164. Therefore, we can conclude that males had higher attitudes of alcohol use compared to the females. Similarly, the average of subjective norms levels was significantly different for males and females. Finally, perceived behavioural control was found to be significantly different between males and females (p-value = 0.008).

In conclusion, attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control were all positively correlated with the intentions to use alcohol. However, problematic alcohol use (stress, depression and anxiety) were not significantly correlated with intentions of alcohol use. Finally, males and females had significantly different average levels of attitudes towards alcohol use, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control.

References

Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behaviour. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50, 179–211. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(91)90020-T

Beckman, N. M., Anderson, K. G., Trim, R. S., Metrik, J., Diulio, A. R., Myers, M. G., & Brown, S. A. (2011). Thinking and drinking: Alcohol-related cognitions across stages of adolescent alcohol involvement. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 25(3), 415–425. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0023302

Cooke, R., Sniehotta, F., & Schüz, B. (2007). Predicting binge-drinking behaviour using an extended TPB: Examining the impact of anticipated regret and descriptive norms. Alcohol and Alcoholism, 42(2), 84–91. https://doi.org/10.1093/alcalc/agl115

Gire, J. T. (2002). A cross-national study of motives for drinking alcohol. Substance Use and Misuse, 37(2), 215–223. https://doi.org/10.1081/JA-120001978

Hale, J. L., Householder, B. J., & Greene, K. L. (2003). Theory of reasoned action. Communications. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0002-8223(99)00012-7

Wilsnack, R. W., Wilsnack, S. C., Kristjanson, A. F., Vogeltanz-Holm, N. D., & Gmel, G. (2009). Gender and alcohol consumption: patterns from the multinational GENACIS project. Addiction (Abingdon, England), 104(9), 1487–1500. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1360-0443.2009.02696.x