Prevention Science

, Volume 17, Issue 5, pp 626–635 | Cite as

Interactions Between Drinking Motives and Friends in Predicting Young Adults’ Alcohol Use

Article
First Online:

Abstract

While drinking motives are well-established proximal predictors of alcohol use, less is known about their role in event-level drinking behavior. The present study examines whether the interaction between individuals’ drinking motives and the number of friends present at a given moment can predict alcohol consumption over the course of the evening. Using the Internet-based cell phone-optimized assessment technique (ICAT), 183 young adults (53.0 % female, mean age = 23.1) in French-speaking Switzerland completed cell phone questionnaires every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evening over five weekends. A total of 7205 questionnaires completed on 1441 evenings were analyzed. Drinking motives and gender were assessed at baseline, while the hourly alcohol consumption rate and number of friends present were assessed at 8 p.m., 9 p.m., 10 p.m., 11 p.m., and midnight. Multilevel growth curve models with time-invariant and time-varying covariates were estimated for men and women separately. Among women, enhancement motives were associated with an increase in the hourly alcohol consumption rate over the course of the evening (b = .025; p < .05). The impact of the number of friends present on the hourly consumption rate was stronger among those women who scored high on coping motives at baseline (b = .028; p < .05). Among men, drinking motives were found to have no moderating effects. Results highlight the role of drinking motives and their interactions with situational characteristics in determining event-level drinking, especially among women. Strategies to prevent risky weekend drinking should focus on both the social environment in which drinking takes place (e.g., the drinking group) and individual drinking motives.

Keywords

Alcohol use Young adults Drinking motives Internet-based cell phone-optimized assessment technique (ICAT) Multilevel growth curve analysis 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Valentin Vago for his technical assistance during the data collection process and Florian Labhart for his invaluable contribution to all aspects of the study.

Ethical Approval

All procedures involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Study procedures were approved by the Ethics Committee of Lausanne University (Canton de Vaud Protocol No. 223/08) and the data were collected between April and July 2010.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Funding

The study was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation Grant No. 100014_126643 awarded to Dr. E. Kuntsche. Dr. Thrul was supported by the National Cancer Institute (Grant R25 CA113710). None of the funding sources had any further role in study design, the collection, analysis and interpretation of data, the writing of the report, or the decision to submit the paper for publication.

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Copyright information

© Society for Prevention Research 2016

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Center for Tobacco Control Research and EducationUniversity of California, San FranciscoSan FranciscoUSA
  2. 2.Addiction Switzerland, Research InstituteLausanneSwitzerland
  3. 3.Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud UniversityNijmegenThe Netherlands

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