Abstract
Drinking alcohol is cited as a way for men to cope with stress, with most of the research emanating from western countries. However, in the East, limited scientific research has been conducted on the relationship between stress and alcohol consumption. Thus, this study aimed to explore the influence of life stress on alcohol use among Chinese men. Our data were drawn from the 2012 China Family Panel Studies that comprised representative samples of the Chinese population. In total, 15,373 Chinese men participated in this study, and their weekly alcohol intake and life stress were evaluated using computer-assisted personal interviews. It was found that the greater the overall life pressure experienced by the Chinese men, the less likely they were to engage in both general (OR = 0.977) and heavy drinking (OR = 0.975). Although severe life stress that interfered with daily life did not affect general drinking, it had a negative effect on heavy drinking. As for less severe life stresses, feeling down and sad had an inhibitory effect on male general and heavy drinking, and experiencing loneliness had a similar effect on general drinking but no effect on heavy drinking. Further, perceiving unfriendliness from others had no influence on male drinking behavior. Although feeling disliked by others had no effect on male drinking behavior, it had a significant, positive effect on male heavy drinking. This study found that in China, stress did not increase male alcohol consumption, but rather, inhibited it. Alcohol consumption is not a preferred strategy for Chinese men dealing with stress.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to express our thanks to the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions. The authors acknowledge the Social Science Foundation of China (17BSH122) for supporting this research.
Paper Context
Drinking alcohol is a way for men to cope with stress, the most relevant evidence regarding which has originated from the West. The overall life pressure of Chinese men has reduced the likelihood of alcohol consumption. Although severe life stress that interferes with their daily life did not affect general drinking, it had a negative effect on heavy drinking. Alcohol consumption is not a preferred strategy of Chinese men to deal with stress. We must rethink alcohol prevention measures and their effectiveness.
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The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research is funded by the Social Science Foundation of China(17BSH122).
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JG and XM conceptualized this study. XM performed the data analysis. JG prepared the first draft of the manuscript and played a major role in structuring the arguments and smoothing out the text. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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The Institutional Review Board of Peking University approved the CFPS protocol. In this study, we used a CFPS dataset that was open to the public.
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The raw data of CFPS were used for this study with permission from the Institute of Social Survey Study, Peking University (ISSS). Informed consent was obtained from all study participants by ISSS.
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This research is funded by the Social Science Foundation of China(17BSH122). The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. Because the data in this research is not collected from human subjects and is not involving Human Participants and/or Animals, EA is no needed in this research.
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Jiafeng Gu and Xing Ming had full access to all of the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis.
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Gu, J., Ming, X. The Effects of Life Stress on Men’s Alcohol Use: a Reassessment of Data from the 2012 China Family Panel Studies. Int J Ment Health Addiction 20, 1946–1957 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-021-00495-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-021-00495-1