OBJECTIVE The purpose of the study was to determine whether students consume alcohol in greater quantities when drinking in celebration of an event or holiday versus typical drinking use. Celebratory occasions include tailgating during football games, holidays, and the beginning and ending of academic semesters. PARTICIPANTS Traditional undergraduates, ages 18 to 24, who attended the universi...

Participation in drinking games by college students has recently sparked research attention. While previous research indicates that women play drinking games at lower frequencies than men, the current study reveals that college women may be playing games at rates similar to college men. In a sample of 105 coed college students, participants completed a 3-month Timeline Followback recording ever...

A series of items that measure the social context of alcohol consumption among adolescents was administered in a questionnaire survey to over 1,300 high school students. Emerging from a factor analysis were five factors which suggested that drinking occurs in the following social contexts: drinking for social facilitation where adults are not present, drinking at school or during school-related...

As part of a parent intervention to reduce heavy-drinking, college freshmen were assessed for their attitudes toward drinking and reasonable alternatives to drinking on the weekends, as well as cognitive variables underlying attitudinal variables. Intervention parents received a handbook the summer prior to college entrance with information about college drinking and best practices for parent-t...

Previous research has shown that social norms are among the strongest predictors of college student drinking. Among college students, perceiving that others drink more heavily than themselves has been strongly and consistently associated with heavier drinking. Research has also shown that the more specifically others are defined, the stronger the association is with one's own drinking. In the c...

This article extends the theory of normative social behavior by conceptualizing drinking refusal self-efficacy as an important moderator in the relationship between descriptive norms and drinking intentions and behavior. A study was conducted among Korean high school students (N = 538) to assess their normative perceptions, drinking refusal self-efficacy, and drinking intentions. We found a sig...

In an effort to further understanding of the “alcohol/income puzzle” — the finding that moderate and perhaps even heavy drinking appears to cause increased income — this paper presents maximum simulated likelihood estimates of a system of limited dependent variables governing smoking and drinking patterns and income. With all else in the system held constant, moderate drinking leads to 10% grea...

Using a cross-sectional survey, data were collected from 265 first-year college students to determine if parent-student alcohol communication is associated with college drinking or drinking consequences and if this relationship is mediated by students' parental subjective norms, attitudes toward drinking, and perceived risk. Structural equation modeling was used to test hypotheses. Students who...

To determine whether alcohol outlet density was correlated with heavy and frequent drinking and drinking-related problems, we compared ecological measures of outlet density with survey measures of drinking using a geographic information system and the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study (n=3,421, site n=8). We identified 966 outlets within 8 2-mile study areas. Densities/site ...