Delinquency and alcohol-impaired driving among young males: A longitudinal study

The present study assessed how the trajectory of delinquency affects the growth curve of alcohol-impaired driving using three-waves of data collected from the Buffalo Longitudinal Survey of Young Men (BLSYM). Using the structural equation modeling method, latent growth modeling was utilized to assess four age cohorts of sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen years of age at the first wave. The data indicated that the growth rate of delinquency significantly and positively affects the growth rate of alcohol-impaired driving for the respondents who were sixteen at the first wave. The growth rate of drinking was also significantly and positively associated with the growth rate of alcohol-impaired driving for this age cohort. Although the growth rate of delinquency had no significant effect on the growth rate of alcohol-impaired driving for the age cohort which was seventeen at Wave 1, the growth rates of both drinking and drug use did affect for this age cohort. The data, however, showed that alcohol-impaired driving had a significant increase across the waves for the eighteen year old cohort, but there was no significant variation in the rate across respondents. Finally, for the nineteen year old cohort there was no significant increase in alcohol-impaired driving across the waves, and also no significant variation of the growth rate of alcohol-impaired driving across the respondents. These findings indicated that interventions focused on reducing delinquency, alcohol and drug use by sixteen and seventeen year old male adolescents will also reduce their alcohol-impaired driving.