A telephone survey of parental attitudes and behaviours regarding teenage drinking

BMC Public Health

Table 4 Cumulative score for attitudes of 234 parents towards their teenager's drinking, higher score indicative of more permissive attitudes.

	number	mean	median	Inter Quartile Range	p value*
Total group	234	1.9	1	0 - 3
Gender of parent
Female	116	1.9	1	0 - 3
Male	118	1.9	1	0 - 3	NS
Age of parent
Under 45 yrs	109	1.7	1	0 - 3
45 yrs and over	125	2.1	1	0 - 4	NS
Location
Dublin	56	2.3	2	0 - 4	No sig diff between Dub, RoL & Muns
Rest of Leinster (RoL)	68	2.3	1	0 - 3
Munster	62	1.7	1	0 - 3	Con vs Dub, <0.01 Con vs RoL, 0.04
Connaught/Ulster	48	1.3	0	0 - 2	Con vs Munster NS
Socio-Economic Group
AB	29	2.7	3	1 - 4
C	123	1.9	1	0 - 3	AB vs C, 0.03
DE	55	1.6	1	0 - 2	AB vs DE, 0.004
F	27	1.6	0	0 - 3	AB vs F, 0.02
Parents drinking status#
Regular	50	2.8	2	0 - 4
Infrequent	149	1.7	1	0 - 3	reg vs infreq 0.02
None	35	1.4	0	0 - 2	non vs reg 0.003 infreq vs non, NS
Parent had given their teenager an alcoholic drink
Yes	25	4.5	4	3 - 6
No	209	1.6	1	0 - 3	<0.001

* Mann-Whitney U test
# Regular drinkers consumed alcohol at least twice per week. Infrequent drinkers consumed alcohol once per week or less frequently.

ISSN: 1471-2458