The current study extends the large body of work reporting on the association between alcohol use and sexual risk-taking by examining the predictive utility of developmental change in alcohol use across early adolescence in a community sample of girls. Our findings showed an increasing propensity to use alcohol across the early adolescent period, an effect that was primarily due to a higher rate of alcohol use at age 12 and a faster rate of increase in alcohol use across subsequent years among European American compared with African American girls. Indeed, both use of alcohol at age 12, and increasing likelihood of alcohol use over time, mediated the effects of European American race on subsequent risky sex after controlling for the effects of problem behaviors and low SES. Increasing use of alcohol by European American girls may result in sexual risk-taking via alcohol’s adverse effects on decision making, awareness of social norms or perceptions of acceptable behavior (Parsons et al. 2004). Alternatively, the link between more rapid increases in alcohol use and later sexual risk-taking may result from the subjective experience
