Berten et al. BMC Public Health 2012, 12:215 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/12/215 Table 2 Multilevel logistic regression for alcohol and cannabis use: results for the full sample Control variables girls migrants age Family SES parent’s work status two parents working one parent working parents’ educational level two parents higher education one parent higher education Education type technical vocational * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001 Beer and wine OR(95% CI) 0.54 (0.36-0.79) 0.20 (0.13-0.30) 1.41 (1.24-1.60) 1.49 (0.96-2.30) 0.70 (0.35-1.40) 2.57 (1.48-4.48) 1.64 (0.96-2.79) 1.23 (0.75-2.01) 1.75 (1.01-3.01) Sig. *** *** *** *** * Spirits (n = 1,448) OR(95% CI) 0.50 (0.32-0.78) 0.41 (0.25-0.69) 1.41 (1.21-1.64) 1.29 (0.74-2.24) 1.37 (0.67-2.80) 2.92 (1.65-5.16) 1.33 (0.73-2.42) 1.84 (1.07-3.17) 3.22 (1.77-5.86) Sig. ** *** *** *** * *** Cannabis OR(95% CI) 0.29 (0.17-0.49) 0.38 (0.19-0.75) 1.38 (1.17-1.62) 0.96 (0.51-1.79) 1.31 (0.58-2.95) 1.98 (0.84-4.66) 1.58 (0.84-2.97) 1.71 (0.84-3.47) 4.04 (1.90-8.61) Page 5 of 9 Sig. *** ** *** *** more frequently. As we hypothesized, our analyses dis- play a clear effect of education type on students’ con- sumption pattern, and these effects prove robust for differences in socio-economic background. Remember however that further analyses should indicate whether these effects are equally strong in both samples of native and migrant teens. Controlling for all other variables in the model, voca- tional students were significantly more likely than their counterparts in general education to use spirits or can- nabis on a regular basis (OR = 3.22 and OR = 4.04 respectively). In addition, vocational students were also inclined to drink beers and wines more frequently, although the level of statistical significance was rather low here (OR = 1.75). With general education as a refer- ence group, no substantial differences were observed for students in technical education. With regard to students’ familial social position, significant effects were found only for parents’ educational level. Frequent alcohol users are more often found among children of high than low educated parents. Such a finding was however not found for cannabis use. The parents’ work status has no effect on adolescents’ alcohol and drug use. Table 3 and Table 4 repeats the same analyses for native and migrant group students separately. This allows us to examine whether the effects of education type differ according to one’s ethnic or cultural back- ground. In accordance with Table 2, both native and migrant students’ family background proved to be of limited importance. While effects of parents’ work status were absent, significant effects were again found for par- ents’ educational level. Regardless of a students’ ethnic/ cultural background, growing up in a ‘high educated family’ increased the risk of frequent alcohol use. The findings in Table 3 further show that, for native Bel- gians, education type clearly structures their alcohol (spirits) and cannabis use (OR = 4.63 and OR = 6.44 respectively). These differences are again most pro- nounced between students in general education and stu- dents in vocational education. However, also students in technical education drink significantly more spirits than their counterparts in the highest track. No differences between educational tracks were observed for drinking beers and wines. The results in Table 4 also show that, for students from another ethnic/cultural background, no significant differences were found between educa- tional tracks. The only exception is for cannabis use, where we found that migrant students in vocational education use cannabis more often than their counter- parts in general education. Discussion Starting from the debate on whether a process of equali- zation in young people’s health is taking place, we pos- ited that in adolescence a shift is taking place away from one’s familial background to a social position that is increasingly determined by students’ own educational career. In the present study we focused on whether alcohol and drug use differs between students from dif- ferent educational tracks, independent of their familial socio-economic background. Our results clearly con- firmed this hypothesis. Students in lower educational tracks use alcohol and cannabis more often than stu- dents in upper educational tracks, although this finding held only for native students. We also illustrated that the effects of education type are not reducible to