Measuring liability for substance use disorder among college students: implications for screening and early intervention

Abstract

Background: Heavy drinking and illicit drug use among college students has been a longstanding public health concern. Current methods to screen and identify college students at-risk for the development of substance use disorders (SUD) are somewhat limited.

Objectives: This study aimed to cross-validate the work by Kirisci et al. ( [1] ), who developed the Transmissible Liability Index (TLI), by deriving a set of items that would be potentially useful for characterizing SUD risk across multiple dimensions among college students. We examined: 1) variations in the TLI-College Version (TLI-CV) by race, sex, SES, religiosity, and family history of substance use problems; 2) the association between the TLI-CV and alcohol and/or marijuana dependence, both cross-sectionally and prospectively, by race and sex; and, 3) the sensitivity and specificity of the TLI-CV for identifying cases of marijuana and/or alcohol dependence.

Methods: Data from an ongoing longitudinal study of college students (n = 1,253) was used to conduct item response theory (IRT) analyses; the resulting TLI-CV consisted of 33 items.

Results: The TLI-CV was significantly associated with baseline dependence and significantly higher for non-dependent individuals who later became dependent during the subsequent three years of college. These associations were observed for both sexes, Whites, Blacks/African-Americans, Asians, and other racial minorities. The sensitivity and specificity were suboptimal.

Conclusions and scientific significance: The TLI-CV advances prior research to identify college students at risk for SUD. This approach holds potential promise to identify and ultimately modify the trajectories of college students who may be at risk for the development of SUD.