Adolescent Alcohol Use in Thailand

thailand group

NPCADA director, Ian Newman, started working in Thailand in the early 1970s as a staff member for the World Health Organization, staffing programs on health promotion and family planning. Ties between NPCADA and Thailand increased in the 1980s when Thai graduate students studied with NPCADA faculty. The University of Nebraska now has a memorandum of agreement with Mahidol University that supports student and faculty exchanges and cooperative research endeavors.

Joint research projects between NPCADA and Thai scholars include an effort to understand alcohol expectancies among Thai adolescents.

Objectives

  • Continue and expand the faculty/student exchange program.
  • Analyze the alcohol expectancy data collected from a sample of approximately 2300 students in Chonburi Province.
  • Revise the expectancy scale used in Thailand to better reflect the influence of Buddhism on alcohol expectancies.
  • Seek support for a longitudinal study of the effects of village level alcohol production.

Activities

At the moment manuscripts describing Thai adolescent alcohol use and alcohol expectancies are being prepared.

In 2003 Dr. Ian Newman was a visiting professor, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at Mahidol University at Salaya.

Between 2006 and 2010 the Nebraska Prevention Center for Alcohol and Drug Abuse hosted 5 Ford Foundation Fellows from the Health Social Science International Program, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Mahidol University at Salaya for a one-semester "sandwich program."

Prevention Center personnel helped to organize the First Conference on Alcohol Consumption and Related Problems held in Bangkok 13-15 July 2005 to explore ways to reduce traffic deaths, including those caused by drunk driving.

A series of informal observations of alcohol production in one particular village led to the plan to seek funding to explore the impact of newly the legalized village level alcohol production on the consumption patterns of villagers.

Resarch Team

Faculty and Graduate Students:
Ian M. Newman, PhD.
Duane F. Shell, PhD.
Saranya Innadda, PhD.


Consultants:
Suree Kanjanawang, PhD, Dean of Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Mahidol University, Salaya campus.
Pimpawan Boonmongkon, PhD, Associate Professor in the Center for Health Policy Studies, Mahidol University, Salaya campus.