Elsevier

Addictive Behaviors

Volume 32, Issue 4, April 2007, Pages 819-835
Addictive Behaviors

Heavy drinking across the transition to college: Predicting first-semester heavy drinking from precollege variables

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2006.06.024Get rights and content

Abstract

Parents, public health officials, college personnel, and society at-large continue to be concerned about the increase in heavy drinking that occurs across the transition to college, prompting alcohol researchers to continue the search for effective interventions. In this report we use data from a large (N = 3720) prospective study to (1) estimate how predictable heavy drinking in the first semester of college is on the basis of information obtained prior to college and (2) identify precollege variables that are important predictors of heavy drinking in the first semester. We found that first-semester heavy drinking is highly predictable, primarily because of continuity from precollege heavy drinking, but also from precollege peer drinking norms, precollege other substance use (esp. tobacco use), and precollege party motivation for attending college. These findings have implications for both the timing and targets of interventions. Interventions timed to occur prior to college and/or in the early months of college may disrupt the momentum of previously established drinking behavior. Furthermore, interventions may be most effective if they target conjoint alcohol and tobacco use, college party motivation, and self-selection into heavy-drinking social environments.

Section snippets

Participants

The target population for the precollege sample (wave 0; the summer prior to college) was all first-time college (FTC) students under the age of 21 who went on to be enrolled at a large Midwestern university on the first day of classes in the fall semester of 2002. The sample obtained at wave 0 consisted of 3720 such individuals. These wave 0 participants were 53.6% female and 90.4% non-Hispanic white and had a mean age on the first day of classes of 18.62 years (S.D. = 0.36) and a mean ACT (a

Heavy drinking across the transition to college

The data for heavy drinking (getting high/light-headed, getting drunk, having 5+ drinks) at waves 0 and 1 are summarized by sex in Table 2, both as percentages across the various response categories and as overall means of the ordinal scales employed in the surveys. Prior to college, about half the male participants reported having engaged in past-30-day heavy drinking (across all three measures) and, in the first semester of college, close to two-thirds of the male participants reporting

Discussion

Parents, college personnel, and society at large are concerned about the escalation of heavy drinking that occurs across the transition to college and persists over the college years; however, because of the dearth of prospective data across the transition, we know very little about the potential influences contributing to this increase. In this paper we use data from our ongoing prospective study of college student drinking to estimate how predictable first-semester heavy drinking is on the

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by grants to Kenneth J. Sher (R37 AA07231) and Andrew C. Heath (P50 AA11998) from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

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