Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Alcohol Use and Other-Sex Friendships

A cohort-sequential study of 1,021 adolescents (52.20% female, 71.36% White non-Hispanic) with a mean starting age of 12.22 years. The dataset, authored by Amy M. Loviska, examines longitudinal associations between the proportion of other-sex close friends and alcohol use across six timepoints. It was last updated on 2026-05-28.

Use Cases

• Modeling between-person associations between social network composition and substance use based on the study's findings.
• Testing theories of peer influence on adolescent risk behavior using longitudinal, multi-wave data.
• Investigating sex differences in the social predictors of alcohol use milestones.
• Applying random-intercept cross-lagged panel models to behavioral data as described in the methodology.

Strengths

• Dataset includes 1,021 participants tracked across six timepoints, enabling longitudinal analysis.
• Study design explicitly tests for sex differences via a multigroup framework.
• Alcohol use was measured via progression on alcohol use milestones, providing a structured outcome.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The 12.5 MB file size suggests a small dataset, potentially limiting statistical power for complex models.

Provenance

Source

Amy M. Loviska

Collection Method

Data likely originates from a cohort-sequential study using adolescent self-reports on close friends and alcohol use milestones.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-28 04:19:38; freshness should be verified.