Role of Parents' Socio-Economic Status, Parenting Styles and Alcohol Locus of Control on Alcohol Attitudes

We assessed the roles of gender, parents' socio-economic status (SES), parenting styles and alcohol-related locus of control (ALoC) on attitudes towards alcohol use among first-year students in a Nigerian university. In a school-based cross-sectional study, 300 first-year university students within the ages of 16 and 31 years with mean age of 21.28 and standard deviation of 2.85 completed copies of a questionnaire. Hierarchical multiple regression showed that being male, high perception of parents' SES, low levels of responsiveness, high autonomy-granting, high demanding parenting styles and external ALoC were highly predictive of positive alcohol use attitudes and accounted for 41% of the variance. Positive alcohol attitudes were mostly predicted by high level of autonomy-granting and less responsive parenting styles, with alcohol-related locus of control recording the lowest contribution. Effective alcohol-related attitudinal change among students should be encouraged while less autonomy-granting and more responsive parenting styles should be adopted by parents. We recommend especially for the male students, the need to see themselves as capable of controlling alcohol-related attitude and behaviour.