Saturday, 15 January 2005 - 4:00 PM

This presentation is part of: Substance Abuse

High-Risk Drinking Among Young Adults: The Influence of College Enrollment and Minority Status

Purpose High-risk alcohol use among young adults is a serious public health problem. Research about drinking in this age group focuses on college students, primarily from European American, non-Hispanic backgrounds. Yet high-risk drinking is prevalent among all young adults. Moreover, little is know about alcohol use among minority college students. This study examines differences in the relationship between individual, interpersonal, and contextual risk and protective factors and high-risk drinking in young adults, with a particular focus on race/ethnicity and college student status.

Methods The data came from the 2001 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse. The sample included 7,331 young adults between the ages of 18 and 21 who were either enrolled in college full time or not attending college at all. A drinking index was created as a product of the quantity and frequency of alcohol use in the last 30 days. Hierarchical linear regression analyses were used to examine the impact of individual factors, (demographics, an interaction between minority status and age, individual attitudes regarding daily drinking, the importance of religion, and engaging in risk-taking behavior); interpersonal factors (how many friends get drunk at least once per week and an interaction between this variable and minority status); and status as a full time college student as a contextual factor.

Results Among drinkers, 26.3% of women and 31.1% of men exceeded NIH thresholds for heavy drinking in the past 30 days (QxF index of 28 drinks for women and 56 drinks for men). Overall, the model strongly predicted high risk drinking (R²= .396). Significant individual risk factors for drinking included being male (&beta=.078), white (&beta=.094), older (&beta=.105), and engaging in risk-taking behaviors (&beta=.190). Significant interpersonal risk factors included friends who got drunk at least once per week (&beta=.301). Attending college was a significant contextual risk factor (&beta=.067) for problematic alcohol use. Further, race interacted with both age (&beta=.032) and the number of friends who got drunk at least weekly (&beta=.078), indicating that older whites, and whites with more friends getting drunk once per week had the greatest quantity by frequency index of drinking. Significant individual protective factors included placing more importance on religion (&beta=-.080) and disapproving of adult daily drinking (&beta=-.169).

Having friends who got drunk at least once per week exhibited the strongest influence on high risk drinking. Young adults in college were more likely to engage in heavy alcohol use, although the influence of college attendance was comparatively small after controlling for friends’ drinking. Similarly, while Caucasian students engaged in more high risk drinking relative to other racial/ethnic groups, minority status was a comparatively weaker predictor after controlling for friends’ drinking.

Implications High-risk drinking is particularly prevalent among young adults. Understanding multiple risk and protective factors provides important information to appropriately target risk-focused preventions and interventions especially in college settings. Programs that target interpersonal situations such as peer group norms may hold the most promise to reduce risk, although those that target individual factors may also be important to increase protection from high-risk drinking.

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