Predicting High School Minority Adolescents' Drinking from Their Exposure to White Schoolmates: Differences and Similarities among Hispanic, Black, and Asian U.S. Adolescents.

White students' drinking may constitute a risk factor for drinking among same-school minority adolescents. Our study examined data from 14,986 ethnic minority American high school students (56% female, mean age = 15.6). Models examined associations between school-level White student drinking and same-school Black, Hispanic, and Asian adolescents' drinking, as well as whether schools' proportions of White students and friendships with White schoolmates moderated these associations. Both school-level White students' drinking and minority students' friendships with White schoolmates were associated with levels of minority student drinking. But these associations were dependent upon levels of other study variables. In particular, there were higher associations between school-level risk factors and minorities' drinking when minority adolescents had high proportions of Whites among their friends.