title: Learning to drink: How Chinese adolescents make decisions about the consumption (or not) of alcohol.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The aim of the study was to provide in-depth understanding of how Chinese adolescents learn to drink and how they make decisions about the consumption (or not) of alcohol. This study explored the ways in which social and cultural factors shape the drinking trajectories of Chinese underage young people.
  
  
  METHODS
  The study used a qualitative design to collect and analyse the data. We recruited adolescents aged between 14 and 17 from a range of secondary schools in Hong Kong. Focus group interviews were undertaken with 22 groups encompassing 111 participants. A thematic analysis based upon grounded theory was performed using NVivo 10.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The traditional Chinese drinking culture, characterised by the coming together of friends and relatives for celebrations, signifies the Chinese adolescents' first alcohol experiment. The adolescents' motivations for drinking essentially reflect the value placed upon alcohol within the Chinese culture - promoting conviviality, sociability and camaraderie. Whereas a sense of commonality encouraged alcohol use among them, there was little indication that drinkers and non-drinkers separately clustered around friendship networks. A high degree of self-regulation was exercised when drinking and this emerged as an acceptable social norm amongst young drinkers within social and cultural contexts. Most respondents saw underage drinking as an entirely normal and accepted part of social lives provided that it is kept under control.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This study sheds light on the Chinese adolescents' own understandings and interpretations of their drinking. Our findings suggest that interventions aimed to curtail underage drinking need to reflect social and cultural contexts within which alcohol comes into play and importantly, consider social environments that are conducive to underage drinking.
authors.affiliation: School of Public Health, LKS Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Electronic address: swyoon@hku.hk.
authors.forename: Sungwon
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Yoon
authors.affiliation: School of Public Health, LKS Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
authors.forename: Wendy W T
authors.initials: WW
authors.lastname: Lam
authors.affiliation: School of Public Health, LKS Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
authors.forename: Judy T L
authors.initials: JT
authors.lastname: Sham
authors.affiliation: School of Public Health, LKS Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
authors.forename: Tai-Hing
authors.initials: TH
authors.lastname: Lam
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D000428:Alcohol Drinking / Q000523:psychology*; D044466:Asian People / Q000523:psychology*; D002755:Choice Behavior; D003469:Culture; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012927:Social Control, Informal
keywords: Alcohol; Chinese adolescents; Chinese drinking culture; Hong Kong; Social context; Underage drinking