# Familial and Environmental Determinants of Alcohol Use Trajectories: Examining 25 Years of Follow-up Data in a Nationally Representative Cohort of Youth

> **NIH NIH R03** · BOSTON UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CAMPUS · 2024 · $82,500

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
Drinking use behaviors occur within a social-ecological environment where individuals are influenced by
personal, interpersonal, community, societal and political factors. Adolescence is a developmentally sensitive
time period where such factors may influence how frequently and consistently individuals use alcohol. While
drinking patterns for young people in the US tend to be typified by escalating frequency of consumption with
age, up until a decrease in use starting in the mid- to late-20s, drinking patterns across these ages are more
heterogeneous than the group average would suggest. Instead, subgroups of individuals may follow a subset
of drinking patterns with variations in the timing of drinking initiation, frequency of consumption, and binge
drinking behaviors. While prior research has documented heterogeneous drinking trajectories within samples
of young people in the US, no literature has modeled parallel trajectory groups incorporating both drinking
frequency and binge drinking simultaneously. Fewer have modeled how adolescent exposures and
experiences may influence trajectory membership. The proposed study advances our current understanding of
alcohol use trajectories by modeling parallel trajectories of alcohol use as well as binge drinking behaviors. For
aim 1, we will use dual trajectory Latent Growth Mixture Modeling (LGMM) to identify and describe trajectories
of alcohol use and binge drinking from age 15 through 40 in a nationally representative sample of US
adolescents followed longitudinally into adulthood. In aim 2, we will use multinomial regression approaches to
investigate the independent and interactive influences of familial and environmental factors experienced in
adolescence on the identified individual alcohol use trajectories. A deeper understanding of long-term alcohol
use patterns and their influences into adulthood may inform future harm reduction messaging and
programming. In addition, examining dual (sometimes referred to as parallel process) trajectories between
frequency of drinking overall and binge drinking will help identify variations in drinking behaviors that may be
masked when looking at only one behavioral outcome in isolation.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10930950
- **Project number:** 5R03AA031340-02
- **Recipient organization:** BOSTON UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CAMPUS
- **Principal Investigator:** Lynsie Ranker
- **Activity code:** R03 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $82,500
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2023-09-20 → 2026-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10930950

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10930950, Familial and Environmental Determinants of Alcohol Use Trajectories: Examining 25 Years of Follow-up Data in a Nationally Representative Cohort of Youth (5R03AA031340-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-26 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10930950. Licensed CC0.

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