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. 2010 Mar;24(1):38-47.
doi: 10.1037/a0017530.

A longitudinal analysis of drinking motives moderating the negative affect-drinking association among college students

Stephen Armeli  1 , Tamlin S Conner, Jerry Cullum, Howard Tennen
Affiliations

A longitudinal analysis of drinking motives moderating the negative affect-drinking association among college students

Stephen Armeli et al. Psychol Addict Behav. 2010 Mar.

Abstract

We examined among college students (N = 530; 276 women) the moderating effects of avoidance (coping) and appetitive (social-enhancement) drinking motives on the within-person associations between anxious and depressive affect and drinking frequency and quantity. Once per year for up to 4 years participants completed standard measures of drinking motives and retrospective reports of affect and drinking in the previous month. In addition, each year they completed a 30-day daily diary of affect and drinking. Results from models examining both the retrospective and aggregate daily data indicated that individuals with high compared with low social-enhancement motives showed stronger positive associations among changes in monthly negative affect and drinking frequency. Weak evidence was found for the predicted moderating effects of coping motives, although some results indicated that its effects were contingent on levels of social-enhancement motives. Our findings suggest that appetitive drinking motives might play an integral role in stress- and negative-affect related drinking among college students.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The relationship between month-level depressive affect and drinking frequency as a function of social-enhancement motives
Figure 2
Figure 2
The relationship between month-level anxious affect and drinking frequency as a function of social-enhancement and coping motives
Figure 3
Figure 3
The relationship between month-level depressive affect and drinking quantity as a function of social-enhancement and coping motives
Figure 4
Figure 4
The relationship between day-level depressive affect and number of drinks on drinking days as a function of social-enhancement motives
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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