The Prevalence and Determinants of Adolescents’ Exposure to Beer Advertisements in Shashemene town, Ethiopia

A substantial proportion of alcohol advertising reaches an underage audience and is presented in a style that is attractive to youths. The objective of the research was to assess the prevalence and determinants of underage adolescents’ exposure to beer advertisements in Shashemene town, Ethiopia. An institutional (school) based cross-sectional research survey design was used where the process of data collection was undertaken at a point in time. The study was based on a structured questionnaire distributed to 300 purposively selected boys and girls between 15-17years old. A pilot study was undertaken before the actual data collection processes. After collection, the data were cleaned, coded and organised. Then, the data were entered into SPSS version 20 for further analysis after which both descriptive and inferential statistical tools were utilized for data analysis and presentation. Underage adolescents in the study area were highly (97.3%) exposed to beer advertisements. Both Pearson’s correlation and multivariate linear regression analysis showed that the level of beer advertisements in predisposing adolescents to drinking was significantly associated with sex (P=.000), experience of chewing chat (P=.000), anticipated reactions of parents (P=.03), and student-teacher interactions (P=.000). Broadcast advertising of beer both on the electronic and social media hasremarkably impacted underage adolescents’ alcohol drinking behaviours in the study area. Therefore, alcohol marketing practices in Ethiopia deserve immediate legal and policy restrictions and the danger calls for an effective enforcement of the existing relevant legal codes.