Andreea Gherda

Publicitate, anul II, grupa a II-a

Reaction Paper

This reaction paper is based on the article entitled Impact of Alcohol Advertising and
Media Exposure on Adolescent Alcohol Use: A Systematic Review of Longitudinal Studies,
written by Peter Anderson from the University of Maastricht, Avalon de Brujin from The
National Foundation for Alcohol Prevention in Utrecht, Kathryn Angus from The Institute for
Social Marketing in Stirling, Ross Gordon from The University of Stirling and Gerard Hastings
from The Open University, published in Alcohol and Alcoholism on the 14th of January,
2009 by the Oxford University Press.
This article reviews thirteen longitudinal studies on the impact of alcohol advertising
and media exposure on future adolescent alcohol use focusing on whether or not exposure to
alcohol advertising and media creates a drinking behaviour as a follow-up, in which the
participants were adolescents under the legal drinking age (18 or 21 in U.K.).
In the introduction of this paper, the authors firstly offer data regarding the subject
collected from several sources in order to outline the fact that drinking is a serious issue among
adolescents, then they continue with explainig the effects that alcohol has on teenagers, the
aspects that encourage them to adopt this behaviour. Afterwards, the paper gives a detailed
explanation on how alcohol advertising and media exposure can influence adolescents into
starting drinking or raise the amount of alcohol drunk and finally, the authors present the two
types of studies that were conducted on this subject, cross-sectional and longitudinal, comparing
them and evaluating which is the most suitable for this particular research.
The following part of the article reffers to the methodology of the review. It includes
information regarding the types of studies that were taken into account, the participants of these
studies, the types of intervention during the researches and the modality of outcome measuring.
This section of the paper informs us that only longitudinal studies were included in the review,
that the participants were adolescents under the legal drinking age in the country in which the
study was conducted and that the outcome measurement ws the self-reported drinking status.
The metodology of the review section of this article also offers information on the search
strategy by detailing every step that was followed during the selection of the studies that were
included.
As far as the results section of the review is concerned, we can observe that the authors
started from an initial number of 810 studies from which they selected thirteeh longitudinal
studies that observed a total of 38,000 adolescents. The reviewed studies measured alcohol
advertising and media exposure of teentager in a variety of ways and the observation of the
participants varied between 8 to 96 months. All the results that were collected from these studies
were synthesized in a table that contained the study reference, the age group, the country, the
objective, the design, the survey method used, the baseline sample size, the follow-up months,

an analysis, covariates and the outcome at follow-up. Afterwards, the authors take each study
separately and explain in details its results.
The last section of the review paper consists in the discussion of the results. From this
section we find that twelve out of the total number of thirteen studies suggest that the exposure
to alcohol-related advertisements, commercials and media is associated with the posibility of
adolescents adopting a drinking behaviour as well as with increased amounts of alcohol drunk
by the baseline drinkers Twelve of the thirteen studies found evidence that such exposure
predicts both the onset of drinking amongst non-drinkers and increased levels of consumption
among existing drinkers.1 Also, in this section it is explained that this paper focused on
longitudinal studies because due to the longer period of time that is needed for observing the
participants in them it is easier to separate the cause from the effect, therefore it is more
convenient to study this type of researches. Finally, the authors illustrate the limitations of their
review and of the studies they reviewed.
The amount of researched information that is offered in this review as well as the
detailed manner of exposing the corroborated results of the thirteen studies that were reviewed
make this article an extremely convincing one. The fact that the results and the studies are
presented from an objective point of view gives the reader the assurance that this particular
paper does not bias any direction of the result, that it just gives a balanced overview of the issue
in discussion.
As a negative aspect of this review, I believe that the search strategy section of the
paper is far too detailed and it makes the reader lose his or her interest in the paper. From my
point of view a brief description of the steps followed in order to collect the needed data would
have been far more convenient.
The subject that is discussed in the review is one of great interest in the nowadays society
even for an uninformed reader, as the teenagers represent a considerable part of our society and
because they also are the future adults and any disorder in their behaviour represent a great
issue for the whole population. As the authors of the review illustrate in the beggining of the
paper, drinking behaviour is linked to several other behavioural disorders from theft to sexually
transmitted diseases, therefore it is crucial to learn and understand what triggers this behaviour
among teenagers in order to find solutions that are actually suitable in order to adjust their
behaviour.
In my opinion, this research represents a very useful baseline for any other further study
because it brings together the results of thirteen different studies and it also mentions several
others, giving the reader a considerable amount of information. Despite the fact that it has too
many details that would not interest a random person, it could prove to be extremely useful for
someone who intends to start a research on this subject.
In conclusion, this research paper offers an overview of thirteen longitudinal studies
regarding the impact of alcohol advertising and media exposure on future adolescent alcohol
use, finally getting to the conclusion that this exposure actually have an impact on the alcohol
consumption behaviour of teenagers. This overview is created by offering detailed results of
each study in particular and finally confronting all the results.

P. Anderson et al. Impact of Alcohol Advertising and Media Exposure on Adolescent Alcohol Use: A
Systematic Review of Longitudinal Studies, Alcohol & Alcoholism, pp. 115, 2009