Teenagers who drink alcohol are at higher risk of becoming victims of violence, a Cardiff University study has found. A team from the School of Dentistry's Violence Research Group studied drinking habits in children aged 11 - 16 in England. They found not only a link between drink and violence but also that children who drank were more likely to be hit, even if they weren't violent themselves. The researchers are now calling for measures to prevent alcohol misuse to reduce injury risk. Current policy focuses on reducing aggression but this research shows that there should be equal effort to reduce victimization. More than 4,000 children were surveyed at 13 schools at four local authorities in the North, the Midlands, London, and the South. The study found that 25% of 11-year-olds were drinking monthly and 3.6% daily, with 12.8% admitting to getting drunk 3 to 5 times a year. By the age of 16, 40% were drinking weekly and 6.2% were drinking every day. The research also showed 22.6% of 16-year-olds were getting drunk more than 21 times a year. The study, which has just been published in the Journal of Adolescence, found a strong link between frequency of drinking and frequency of hitting other people. However, children who reported drinking monthly were also three times more likely to be hit. Adolescents  who drank but didn't get into fights were more likely to be hit than those who did fight. Professor Jonathan Shepherd, who led the research, said a lot of previous alcohol-related violence work had focused on the offenders  rather than the victims. His team is calling for more prevention work from parents and teachers in the first two years of secondary school by taking advantage of the "teachable moment", that is, immediately after a student has missed school because of drunkenness. Previous work by Professor Jonathan Shepherd has shown drinkers may be more at risk of violence because of reduced physical co-ordination, poor decision-making in threatening situations and isolation while out late at night. He said, "This new study seems to be the first to show a direct link between alcohol misuse and victimization. There now needs to be much more effort put into reducing alcohol misuse in order to reduce injury." The main idea of the passage is that teenagers who drink alcohol   _  .
often offend other people often become injured are more likely to fight with others are more likely to become victims of violence