A Cross-Cultural Test of Social Bonding, Differential Association/Social Learning, and Strain Theories of Adolescent Alcohol Use in Türkiye

Cross-cultural simultaneous tests of the effects of social bonding, differential association/social learning, and strain theories on adolescent alcohol use are very rare worldwide. The present study examined the effects of social bonding, differential association/social learning, and general strain theories on adolescent alcohol use using a sample of 1,710 high school students from central Ankara, the capital of Türkiye, in 2001. In the simultaneous test of the three theories, attachment to teachers and school involvement (i.e., social bonding variables) reduced the likelihood of adolescent alcohol use, whereas close friends’ alcohol use, father’s alcohol use, delinquent peers, criminal family members, and definitions favorable to alcohol use (i.e., differential association/social learning variables) increased it. However, the gap between educational aspiration and educational expectation and the gap between monetary aspiration and educational expectation (i.e., general strain theory variables) decreased the likelihood of adolescent alcohol use. Overall, the three theories are largely associated with alcohol use in the theoretically expected direction, except for some strain theory variables, which deviated from expectations only in the simultaneous test. Differential association/social learning theory plays the most important role in explaining adolescent alcohol use, followed by social bonding theory and general strain theory.