The Influence of Changes in Marital Status on Developmental Trajectories of Alcohol Use

ABSTRACT. Objective. Multiple group latent curve analysis was used to assess the impact of changes in marital status on alcohol use trajecto-ries in young adults and to test if these effects varied across ethnicity and gender. Method: Four years of data were obtained from a sample of young adults (N = 4,052; 54 % male) drawn from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Alcohol use and marital status were as-sessed once per year and covariates included age, gender, education and ethnicity. Results: Latent curve models indicated that there was an over-all nonlinear negative alcohol use trajectory across the four time points and that becoming married was reliably associated with an added down-turn to this trajectory. Multiple group models indicated that there was an interaction between ethnicity and marital status in the prediction of al-cohol growth trajectories, but there was no interaction with gender. Conclusions: Becoming married for the first time exerted a unique ef-fect on the overall developmental trajectory of alcohol use over time