Predicting Changes In Drinking And Alcohol Consequences During Freshman Year

Author : Brian Hardin Calhoun
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (113 download)

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Download or read book Beyond Heavy Episodic Drinking written by Brian Hardin Calhoun and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alcohol use commonly begins during high school, increases and peaks in the early twenties, and then decreases during young adulthood as individuals transition into adult work and social roles. The peak in alcohol use trajectories during the early twenties is particularly pronounced for college students. Although many heavy drinking college students mature out of this behavior, some develop patterns of heavy drinking that continue into adulthood and which may lead to serious health and/or developmental problems, such as alcohol use disorder. Heavy episodic drinking (HED), or women/men consuming four/five or more drinks in a row, is the most widely used indicator of heavy college drinking, and has been shown to predict an array of negative consequences across multiple domains. However, research is increasingly showing that some students drink at levels far beyond this threshold on many occasions. Recent findings have also demonstrated that drinking in specific contexts, such as when pregaming, is associated with HED and can be particularly risky. This dissertation sought to advance research on heavy college drinking by demonstrating the need for researchers to better differentiate among levels of drinking and to more fully consider the effects of HED in certain situations, such as before going out (Pregame HED) and during the daytime (Day Drinking). Data came from the University Life Study which followed first-year, first-time, full-time college students under the age of 21 at a large, land grant university (N = 736, M = 18.44 years old, SD = .43 years). Students were selected using a stratified random sampling technique that resulted in a balanced sample in regard to gender (50.8% female) and four major race/ethnicity groups (25.1% Hispanic/Latinx, 15.7% African American non-Hispanic [NH], 23.3% Asian American/Pacific Islander NH, 27.4% European American NH, and 8.5% multiracial NH). A longitudinal measurement-burst design was used in which students completed a longer web-based survey and up to 14 consecutive web-based daily surveys in each of their first seven semesters (3 years) of college.Paper 1 introduces the concept of Pregame HED, or getting drunk before going out, and tested whether students were more likely to engage in high-intensity drinking (HID; i.e., double the HED threshold) and risky behaviors and whether they experienced more negative consequences on Pregame HED days than on days they consumed a more moderate amount of drinks while pregaming (N = 4,454 drinking days nested within N = 521 students who reported drinking on at least one occasion in Semesters 4-7 when data on pregaming were available). Multilevel models nesting days within semesters within persons contrasted Pregame HED days, that is, days students got drunk before going out, with drinking days on which they consumed a more moderate amount of alcohol while pregaming. Pregame HED was reported by 41% of drinkers and on 15% of drinking days and 38% of pregaming days. Students were more likely to engage in HID and to use illegal drugs and experienced more negative consequences on Pregame HED days than on Moderate Pregaming days. Similar to past research, students were more likely to engage in HID, experience negative consequences, play drinking games, and mix alcohol with energy drinks on Moderate Pregaming days than on Non-Pregaming drinking days.Paper 2 introduces the concept of Day Drinking, or drinking that begins during the daytime (i.e., between 6:00 AM and 3:45 PM), and tested whether students were more likely to engage in HED, HID, and risky behaviors and whether they experienced more negative consequences on Day Drinking days than on days drinking began during the evening or nighttime (N = 7,549 drinking days nested within 618 student drinkers). Day Drinking was reported by 50% of drinkers and on 9% of drinking days across the study. Results of multilevel models nesting days within semesters within persons showed that students were more likely to engage in HED and HID, play drinking games, and use illegal drugs on Day Drinking days than on Nighttime-Only drinking days. Students who reported Day Drinking more frequently were more likely to report HED, HID, mixing alcohol with energy drinks, and negative consequences of alcohol use on drinking days across the study.Paper 3 tested whether three novel risky drinking indicators (HID, Day Drinking, and Pregame HED) predicted medium-term health, legal, and academic consequences, beyond associations with HED (N = 473 student drinkers). Logistic and negative binomial regressions tested whether risky drinking behaviors earlier in college predicted consequences several years later by fourth year of college. Results showed that Pregame HED in the middle of college predicted greater alcohol-related problems and a hazardous and harmful pattern of drinking, independent of HED, in fourth year. First-year HID independently predicted a hazardous and harmful pattern of drinking in fourth year, whereas first-year Day Drinking was not independently associated with any of the four outcomes. Supplemental analyses demonstrated that Pregame HED and HID provided greater specificity in predicting medium-term consequences than HED, and HED provided greater sensitivity.Taken together, this dissertation highlights how common these three extreme, yet understudied, risky drinking behaviors were among the traditionally-aged, full-time students in this multi-ethnic sample from a large, land grant university. This work demonstrates the importance of better differentiating among levels of alcohol consumption and of considering the context in which heavy drinking occurs. By only using single, dichotomous indicators of risky drinking (i.e., HED or any pregaming), researchers fail to capture much of the unique variance that predicts both acute and distal outcomes. It is argued that by using the three novel indicators of risky drinking assessed here (i.e., Pregame HED, Day Drinking, and HID) in conjunction with the broader and more widely used HED and any pregaming indicators, researchers will be able to better identify nuances in the associations between risky college drinking and its correlates and consequences, such as whether particular correlates and consequences are more a result of the amount of alcohol consumed or whether it is the situation in which it is consumed that is particularly conducive to that behavior or consequence. This dissertation illustrated this type of nuanced association by showing that the amount of alcohol consumed while pregaming predicted the number of negative consequences students experienced, whereas students likelihood of playing drinking games was predicted by pregame drinking more generally, regardless of amount. Future work could use a similar analytic technique to assess nuances in other correlates and consequences of risky college drinking.