Several studies have shown that some youth drink far more than the traditional binge drinking criteria of 5+ drinks for men and 4+ for women. As a result, researchers are moving beyond the heavy episodic binge drinking criteria and focusing instead on more extreme levels of drinking in order to identify at-risk college students. Unfortunately, there has been little research on extreme drinking and what motivates it. This study included previously collected data from an integrative data analysis on 3518 students that were drinkers at baseline. Follow-up assessments were conducted over 12 months post-baseline. Students reported their alcohol use frequency including the maximum number of drinks they’d had on one occasion, the number of drinking days per typical week, and the total number of drinks per typical week. Students also reported their reasons for drinking on the Drinking Motivations Questionnaire-Revised, of which four subscale scores of social, enhancement, coping, and conformity motives were computed. Men were classified as extreme drinkers if they consumed 10+ drinks on one occasion and women were classified as extreme drinkers if they had 8+ drinks. Of the students sampled, 43.1% were extreme drinkers. Extreme drinkers in this study were more likely to be male, white, later-year (non- first-year students), and members of a fraternity or sorority. This study found that extreme drinkers were more likely to drink for social, enhancement, and coping motives when compared to their non-binge and binge drinking peers. This relationship was linear and showed greater endorsement as drinking quantities increased. Increases in social and enhancement motives were associated with becoming an extreme drinker, while reductions in enhancement and coping motives were associated with cessation of extreme drinking.
Take away: Findings of this study indicate that the typical heavy episodic drinking measures may not be sufficient for identifying college students at greatest risk for experiencing alcohol problems. It is critical to target these extreme drinking students most at risk in order to reduce the harms of drinking. As such, colleges may benefit from developing interventions that focus on enhancement, social, and coping motives while targeting students in this extreme drinking category.
White, H.R., Anderson, K.G., Ray, A.E., and Mun, E.Y. (2016). Do drinking motives distinguish extreme drinking college students from their peers? Addictive Behaviors, 60, 213-218.