Variables from intrapersonal, interpersonal, and personal competencies domains were examined for a sample of rural 7th-grade students at the beginning and end of the school year. The data used were from six rural Northern Appalachian school districts as part of the Adoption of Drug Abuse Prevention Training study. Data were collected from 491 students in 6 school districts who completed full surveys at the 2 time periods. This represented 72.4 percent of all students in these 6 schools who were eligible to participate in the study. Study results found that factors from all three domains examined were significant predictors of an increase in alcohol use for this group. At the intrapersonal level, poor parental monitoring and perceived ease of access to alcohol were significant predictors of an increase in alcohol use, as well as the perception that substance use was fun. Perception of normative use by adolescents was significant at the interpersonal level, as were low refusal skills from the personal competencies domain; however, lack of parental monitoring and perceived ease of access to alcohol emerged as the strongest predictors of an increase in alcohol use, reinforcing the importance of family strengths in conjunction with school-based programming as a needed prevention approach. These results also suggested the importance of parental prevention efforts beginning well prior to the critical transition to junior high school in the areas of family relations and standards. 4 tables, 1 figure, and 25 references