df=1, p<.001). Nevertheless, the approach of combining these possibly different types of girls into one group likely produced more conservative findings about the predictive utility of increasing alcohol use for subsequent sexual risk-taking than if prior sexual history was also considered in the model. Although examination of this developmental variability was beyond the scope of the current paper, it is clearly an important question that warrants further investigation. Third, girls’ report of any alcohol use included sips, tastes as well as full standard drinks, and frequency of use was not examined. The low threshold for endorsing alcohol use may have further increased the heterogeneity within the sample, and diluted the strength of the associations with risky sex and the covariates. Furthermore, evidence from studies of adults has shown that the distal consequences of alcohol use depend on lifetime cumulative volume consumed, the way alcohol is drunk, and the context in which the drinking occurs (Leigh 2002). For example, heavy drinking episodes with intoxication are associated with higher sexual risks than lighter or non-binge drinking. These distinctions were not made in the current analyses due to the low variability in the frequency of alcohol use in this early developmental period, but
