Gohari Mahmood R, Varatharajan Thepikaa, MacKillop James, Leatherdale Scott T
School of Public Health Sciences, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada.
Peter Boris Centre for Addictions Research, St. Joseph's Healthcare and McMaster University, 100 West 5th Street, Hamilton, ON L8P 3R2, Canada.
Healthcare (Basel). 2023 Jul 5;11(13):1945. doi: 10.3390/healthcare11131945.
Youth drinking is highly heterogenous, and subpopulations representing different alcohol use patterns may have responded differently to the COVID-19 pandemic. This study examined changing patterns of alcohol use in subpopulations of the youth population over the first two years of the pandemic.
We used linked survey data from 5367 Canadian secondary school students who participated in three consecutive waves of the COMPASS study between 2018/19 and 2020/21. Latent transition analysis (LTA) was used to identify patterns of alcohol use based on the frequency of drinking and frequency of binge drinking and to estimate the probability of transitioning between identified patterns.
LTA identified five patterns of alcohol use each representing a unique subpopulation: abstainer, occasional drinker-no binging, occasional binge drinker, monthly binge drinker, weekly binge drinker. Probability of being engaged in binge drinking for a subpopulation of occasional drinkers pre-pandemic was 61%, which reduced to 43% during the early-pandemic period. A lower proportion of occasional binge drinkers reported moving to monthly or weekly binge drinking. Female occasional drinkers were more likely to move to binge drinking patterns during the pandemic than males.
Less frequent drinking and younger students were more likely to reduce their drinking and binge drinking than more established drinkers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Understanding of heterogenous patterns of alcohol drinking and different responses to public health crises may inform future preventive programs tailored to target subpopulations more effectively.
青少年饮酒情况高度异质，代表不同饮酒模式的亚群体对新冠疫情的反应可能有所不同。本研究调查了疫情头两年青少年亚群体饮酒模式的变化情况。
我们使用了来自5367名加拿大中学生的关联调查数据，这些学生在2018/19年至2020/21年期间连续参加了三轮COMPASS研究。潜在转变分析（LTA）用于根据饮酒频率和暴饮频率确定饮酒模式，并估计在确定模式之间转变的概率。
LTA确定了五种饮酒模式，每种模式代表一个独特的亚群体：戒酒者、偶尔饮酒不暴饮者、偶尔暴饮者、每月暴饮者、每周暴饮者。疫情前偶尔饮酒者亚群体中暴饮的概率为61%，在疫情早期降至43%。报告转变为每月或每周暴饮的偶尔暴饮者比例较低。疫情期间，女性偶尔饮酒者比男性更有可能转变为暴饮模式。
在新冠疫情期间，饮酒频率较低的人和年龄较小的学生比饮酒习惯更固定的人更有可能减少饮酒和暴饮。了解饮酒的异质模式以及对公共卫生危机的不同反应，可能为未来更有效地针对亚群体量身定制预防计划提供参考。
