The primary variables of interest in this study involved three potentially problematic behaviors: alcohol drinking, cigarette smoking, and sexual intercourse. Participants provided information about when, if ever, they had initiated each of these behaviors using a 14-point scale including never, preschool, and first to twelfth grades. Responses were recoded into three categories: teen initiators (seventh to twelfth grades), preteen initiators (first to sixth grades or preschool), and non-initiators. School grade appeared to serve as a more salient cue than age in terms of eliciting recollections from students.9 To test our second hypothesis, nine different categories were derived, according to the period at first occurrence, from the combination of the three problem behaviors, as shown in Table 5. For example, "teen initiators with one behavior" referred to individuals who initially experienced one of the three problem behaviors during their teenage years; "preteen and teen initiators with two behaviors" referred to individuals who initially experienced one of the three behaviors during their teenage years and one of the other behaviors during their preteen years.
