When college students consume alcohol to suppress negative affective mood or enhance positive mood.

Mood Enhancement

In a study on college students, for both men and women social camaraderie was the most reported reason for drinking. Therefore, social reasons such as parties, gatherings, and more are a big influence on why college students drink the amount that they do. Social motives are high predictor of alcohol consumption.

Social Camaraderie

According to The Reason For Drinking Scale (Cronin, 1997) there are three areas of reasoning for drinking.

Mood Enhancement, Tension Reduction, and Social Camaraderie

Creighton University

It is extremely common among college students to be consuming alcohol and participating in binge drinking.

Binge Drinking is defined as consuming 4 or more alcoholic beverages for women and five or more alcoholic beverages for men.

Alcohol Use with College Students

Alcohol consumption is highly correlated with social events like bars and parties, compared to in the home among college students.

Of 2646 college students, one in four reported an aggressive incident at one of the locations.

More severe aggressive altercations were correlated with more alcohol consumption at the location.

Aggression Behaviors with Consuming Alcohol

Binge drinking for women is considered to be four or more drinks, while binge drinking for men is five or more drinks.

Male college students drink MORE OFTEN than female college students, but females consume more alcohol when they do drink.

Gender Differences with Alcohol Use in College Students

Reason for Drinking

Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality. 2021 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH-2021-DS0001) public use data file. Past-month alcohol use: a drink of an alcoholic beverage (a can or bottle of beer, a glass of wine or a wine cooler, a shot of distilled spirits, or a mixed drink with distilled spirits in it), not counting a sip or two from a drink in the past 30 days. Past-month binge alcohol use: five or more drinks on the same occasion for males or four or more drinks on the same occasion for females on at least 1 day in the past 30 days. Available from: https://www.datafiles.samhsa.gov/dataset/national-survey-drug-use-and-health-2021-nsduh-2021-ds0001. Accessed July 28, 2023.

Alcohol Use with College Students Study Reference

Heavy drinking among college students is associated with an increased risk of physical, mental, social, and legal consequences.

Heavy drinking is binge drinking once a month or more over the span of a year.

Consequences of Alcohol Use

Cronin C. Reasons for drinking versus outcome expectancies in the prediction of college student drinking. Subst. Use Misuse. 1997;32:1287–1311. doi: 10.3109/10826089709039379.

Reference for Reason for Drinking

Paul F. Tremblay, Kathryn Graham, Samantha Wells, Severity of physical aggression reported by university students: A test of the interaction between trait aggression and alcohol consumption, Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 45, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 3-9, ISSN 0191-8869, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2008.02.008.

Reference for Aggression Behaviors with Consuming Alcohol

Wagoner, K. G., Blocker, J., McCoy, T. P., Sutfin, E. L., Champion, H., & Wolfson, M. (2012). Free alcohol use and consequences: gender differences among undergraduates. American journal of health behavior, 36(4), 446–458. https://doi.org/10.5993/AJHB.36.4.2

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