Relations of Social Skills, Personal Competence, and Adolescent Alcohol Use

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Abstract
Findings from school-based drug prevention interventions indicate that social skills and personal competence are an effective barrier against adolescent alcohol use. Efficacious and competent youth are hypothesized to possess skills to reduce offers for alcohol and invoke alternative strategies that offset peer pressure. To understand these developmental relations, a longitudinal model that specified effects of early alcohol use on later social skills and competence and their recursive influences was tested using data obtained from a cohort of nontreatment youth participating in a drug abuse prevention trial Social skills, personal competence, and consumption were temporally stable from the 8th through 10th grade. Early competence predicted lowered alcohol use, whereas social skills were associated with greater subsequent alcohol use. Social influence risk moderated the competence-consumption relations, underscoring the close developmental interplay between social context and intrapersonal risk. Findings are discussed in terms of cognitive-behavioral strategies to effectively reduce alcohol use.