Chunk #15 — 3. Results — 3.1 Prevalence and Mean Ages of Onset and Years to Transition — 3.1.1 Initiation of Drinking: Race/ethnicity and Sex Differences
An estimated 85.4% of the study sample reported lifetime alcohol use, and the average age of drinking onset was 18.22 years. As shown in Table 1, men had a younger mean age of drinking initiation than women overall and within the same race/ethnicity. This difference varied from nearly one year for Whites to one and a half years for Hispanics. White men and women initiated drinking at younger ages than Black and Hispanic men and women, respectively (all p-values < 0.001). There were no statistically significant differences in the age of initiation at the p < 0.05 level between Black and Hispanic men or among the women.
