Development and Testing of a Culturally-Adapted Measure of the Drinker Prototype for Thai Adolescents

Favorability of and perceived similarity to the attributes of the prototypical teen drinker – (a known risk factor for adolescent alcohol use) have not been examined in Thailand. Though there is an existing measure of the drinker prototype, it has not been adapted for use in Thailand. The attributes that comprise the drinker prototype in Thai adolescents are unknown. The purpose of this study was to culturally adapt an existing adolescent drinker prototype measure and psychometrically test it in Thai adolescents. Six age/gender specific focus groups were conducted with Thai adolescents (N=43) the 7th to 9th grades (aged 13-15) at a public middle school in Thailand to identify the characteristics of adolescent Thai drinkers. The attributes characterizing the drinker prototype were sociable, fighter, talkative cool, mature, and funny. Then, the attributes that comprise the drinker prototype were incorporated into the measure and translated into Thai using the committee approach. After conducting cognitive interviews to verify that the measure was understandable, reliability and validity testing of the culturally-adapted measure was conducted with 306 Thai adolescents in the 7th to 9th grades. Adolescents rated the favorability of and similarity to the six drinker prototype attributes on 5 point Likert scales and answered questions about lifetime alcohol use, past year alcohol use, number of drinking days in the past year, and maximum number of drinks-per-occasion in the past year. Fifty-eight percent of the sample reported ever drinking and 33% reported past year drinking. Past year drinkers reported drinking 7.4 (SD=13.0) days/last year; maximum number of drinks/occasion was 4.14 (SD=7.4). The average favorability and similarity scores were slightly above or at the scale midpoint (3.2 and 3.0 respectively). Internal consistency for favorability was low (alpha=.56) but for similarity was adequate (alpha = .70). Correlations were modest between favorability and alcohol use (rho=.15-.19) for girls, but were stronger between similarity and alcohol use (rho=.38-.51). The only correlation for boys was between similarity and ever drinking (rho=0.21). Findings suggest that our culturally adapted adolescent drinker prototype measure works as well for girls as it does with other samples, but it is not valid or reliable for boys.