Longitudinal Study: Time Attitudes and Alcohol Consumption in Texas

This report presents a longitudinal study investigating the impact of time attitudes on alcohol consumption among adolescent school children in Texas. The study, conducted in two phases, utilized a stratified random sampling technique to assess the correlation between time attitudes (positive, mixed, and negative) and alcohol consumption. The research explores three hypotheses, focusing on how positive, mixed, and negative time profiles relate to alcohol use and life expectancy. Variables such as alcohol consumption, association with alcohol use, and subjective longevity were evaluated. The sampling strategy involved selecting schools and randomly choosing students, with data collected from 985 and 783 students in phase 1 and phase 2, respectively. The report details the advantages and disadvantages of the sampling strategy and its impact on the study's outcomes. The study also addresses the importance of time attitudes in predicting behavior and decision-making, with references to relevant literature. The report also includes the research questions, hypotheses, and sampling strategy. The study aims to understand the relationship between time attitudes and alcohol consumption among teenagers and their life expectancy.

Impact of the Time Attitudes on Alcohol-Related Approach
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Abstract
This article presents estimates the influence of time attitude of adolescent school children from
the eastern and western province of Texas. Stratified random sampling was used in the present
longitudinal study to measure the cohort impact of the three, time attributes on alcohol
consumption among teenagers. The adolescent 30-point time scale with 5-point Likert gradation
was used to evaluate the time attitude of the participants. The study proposes the sample sizes of
the two phases and critically appraises the sampling strategy.
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Table of Contents
Abstract...................................................................................................................................................................... 1
Description of the Topic....................................................................................................................................... 2
Literature Review................................................................................................................................................... 3
Research Questions and Hypotheses......................................................................................................... 3
Unit of Analysis........................................................................................................................................................ 4
Description of the Variables............................................................................................................................... 4
Sampling Strategy................................................................................................................................................... 4
Advantages and Disadvantages of the Sampling Strategy.....................................................................5
References................................................................................................................................................................. 6
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Description of the Topic
The present article involves the children who are about 12 years old in Texas province of USA.
Usually, the prevalence of alcohol consumption is noted to be increasing between the ages of 10
and 18, especially with each class of the school year. So the incidence of drinking is low early
adolescence, and as teenagers age, more frequent consumption of alcohol becomes a practice.
The scholar plan was to investigate the permanence of time attitudes and the correlation between
with variables caused by the attitude exhibited for consuming alcohol, and their life expectancy.
This longitudinal study was conducted in two phases, wherein phase-1the authenticity and
reliability of the time attitude at an average age of 11.5 years was assessed. In the second phase
at an average age of 14.5 years, the viability and stability of the time profiles were evaluated.
Positive, mixed, and negative attitudes were the three approaches on which participants were
evaluated. Positive attitude had higher evaluations of positive time profile; negative higher was
noted on a higher negative time attitude scale. The positive attitude participants were found to
have a conservative attitude towards alcohol consumption and expected to live longer compared
to negative attitude participants.
Literature Review
Studies on the use of alcohol by young people have always considered that the period of
transition from primary school to secondary school is an important stage of development (Currie
et al., 2009). According to some researchers, the probability of survival till 35 years is
considered life expectancy (Byberg et al., 20009). This is conceptualized in a broader literature
on psychology that uses individual questions in predicted longevity approaches as a measure of a
future trend. However, the study showed very low correlations with the subjective life
expectancy. In a study conducted elsewhere, mortality by age is based on a self-assessment of
life expectancy (Jylha, 2009). In the mentioned studies, however, men expected to live longer
than actuarial valuations. An evaluation of life expectancy (subjective in nature) may be
important since the new researches suggest that it affects both behavior and decision making. In
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particular, studies have shown that the teenagers with a lower life expectancy are more likely to
behave with malicious behavior and more criminal behavior than their peers (Raine, 2013). The
literature that examines these relationships is rare and, therefore, includes an assessment of
subjective longevity to discover how this model can relate to the feelings of the past, as well of
present and future.
Research Questions and Hypotheses
This study uses time classification profiles of the first two data waves available from the
longitudinal study in the United States to assess their relationship with the results of three
measures of the research, alcohol consumption and addiction measures; as well as the life
expectancy in subjective sense. Despite the subjective nature of the study, the scholar made three
hypotheses based on limited literature:
H01: It was expected that a teenager with more positive temporal adjustments had more
adaptable characteristics and comparatively less alcohol consumption tendency in both the
phases.
H02: It was also hypothesized that those people who have had positive time profiles and those
who have moved towards the positive profile would exhibit an adaptive positive attitude and
consume less alcohol.
H03: It was suspected that people who have had adverse time profiles had less adaptable traits
and more alcohol consumption inclination.
Unit of Analysis
The study involved measurement of five items. For this quantitative research, scores for time
attributes, profile analysis of the participants, the transition of the participants from phase1 to
phase2, and the relation between the transition in three, time attributes and attitude towards
alcohol consumption was estimated. The descriptive summary of the variables was used for
differentiating between the estimates of phase1 and phase2.
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Description of the Variables
These variables include the attitude to alcohol, the association with alcohol consumption, and
subjective longevity (Dependent). The validity of the time attitudes was established for three,
time attitudes, respectively Positive, Negative and Negative Futures (Independent). The
adolescent time scale of the 30-point instrument with six 5-point Likert subscales was considered
to assess Negative, Positive, and future Positive attitudes. Ratings are scored on a 5-point scale
with numerical ratings as 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = completely agree.
Sampling Strategy
The pupils from the selected schools had been recruited as part of a long-term study of alcohol
consumption by youth consumption in Texas. The data was collected in a stratified random
sampling technique. The schools with more than 300 student strength were selected in the first
step stratified method, and students were later selected randomly from the teenage age group. In
addition to the school's permission to complete the study, all pupils received consent from the
parents. There was no monetary bonus for schools or individuals to attend. In phase1,
participants participated in the test of 8th grade, where participants aged approximately around
12 years were called. Sample 1 consisted of 985 young people (37% women) who attended
secondary schools in Eastern Texas. Sample 2 consisted of 783 students (36.9% of women) who
attended secondary schools in western Texas. Participants were compared on the basis of two
data collection phases, which gave a final analytical test of 1468 young people. For reasons of
clarity, the phase 2 participants were selected based on a minimum age of 13 years. Young
people (N = 300) who refrained from answering the questions in data collection at phase 2 were
excluded from the study because their response at the age of 12 was not longitudinal.
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Advantages and Disadvantages of the Sampling Strategy
The restriction of the present literature was that almost all previous studies have used transverse
data, and many have studied the bivariate correlation between psychological behavior and the
consumption of alcoholic indicators. Earlier researchers have used a multi-stage model that
includes time and education provided at school as random effects. This particular style of
statistical modeling also presupposes that the population was homogeneous in nature of the
predictors with the future forecast results. Some researchers have successfully made human-
centered analysis by providing hierarchical cluster analysis (Zhou, De la Torre, & Hodgins,
2013). Accordingly, some of them reported that the highest levels of positivity were also
recorded among students with a positive orientation towards life with adverse attitude for
drinking. The present longitudinal stratified method helped in cohort analysis due to the change
in attitude in adolescence.
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References
Byberg, L., Melhus, H., Gedeborg, R., Sundström, J., Ahlbom, A., Zethelius, B., ... &
Michaëlsson, K. (2009). Total mortality after changes in leisure time physical activity in
50 year old men: 35 year follow-up of population based cohort. Bmj, 338, b688.
Currie, C., Zanotti, C., Morgan, A., Currie, D., De Looze, M., Roberts, C., ... & Barnekow, V.
(2009). Social determinants of health and well-being among young people. Health
Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study: international report from the, 2010,
271.
Jylhä, M. (2009). What is self-rated health and why does it predict mortality? Towards a unified
conceptual model. Social science & medicine, 69(3), 307-316.
Raine, A. (2013). The psychopathology of crime: Criminal behavior as a clinical disorder.
Elsevier.
Zhou, F., De la Torre, F., & Hodgins, J. K. (2013). Hierarchical aligned cluster analysis for
temporal clustering of human motion. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and
Machine Intelligence, 35(3), 582-596.
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