Sports participation and problem alcohol use: a multi-wave national sample of adolescents.

Background: Sports participation, though offering numerous developmental benefits for youths, has been associated with adolescent alcohol use. Differences also exist between men/boys and women/girls in both sports participation and patterns of alcohol-related behaviors, but there are few longitudinal investigations of this relationship.

Purpose: This study investigated the relationship between school-based sports participation and alcohol-related behaviors using data from a multiwave national study of adolescent men/boys and women/girls.

Methods: Nationally representative data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, collected between 1994 and 2001, were analyzed in 2009 (n=8271). Latent growth modeling, accommodating the complex sampling design, was applied to examine whether participation in school-based sports was associated with initial levels and change in problem alcohol use over three waves of data collection.

Results: After taking into account time-invariant covariates including demographics and other predictors of alcohol use, greater involvement in sports during adolescence was associated with faster average acceleration in problem alcohol use over time among youths who took part in only sports. The findings suggest, however, that the relationship between sports participation and problem alcohol use depends on participation in sports in combination with other activities, but it does not differ between men/boys and women/girls.

Conclusions: Sports may represent an important and efficient context for selective interventions to prevent problem alcohol use and negative consequences of alcohol use among adolescents.