A screening focusing on aftereffects of alcohol consumption in a student population. A National cross-sectional survey

Abstract

Introduction: Students overestimate alcohol consumption of those around them and underestimate their own, so that quantitative approach may not be the most relevant to assess students' drinking. The main objective was to provide an appropriate tool for screening for students with potential drinking problems.

Methods: A multicentre cross-sectional survey was conducted by internet between February and June, 2013 in France. Thirteen questions explored alcohol consumption, including 8 concerning after-effects of drinking episodes (4 items of the AUDIT) and alcohol behaviour (CAGE test). A multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) was conducted to identify profiles of student's alcohol consumption. Partitioning methods were used to group students by mode of alcohol use. The most relevant items included in the MCA were identified. Three questions were identified as most pertinent among the students with potential drinking problems and ranked by a decision tree with the Chi-square Automatic Interaction Detector method. Finally, we assessed the generalisation of the model.

Results: A total of 36,427 students participated in the survey: 25,679 were women (70.5% of respondents), sex ratio 0.42 and mean aged 21.2 (sd 3.7 years). Among those who had experimented with alcohol (N = 33,113), three consumption profiles were identified: "simple/non-use" (66.9%), "intermediate consumption" (25.9%) and "problem drinking" (7.2%). For the latter group, the three most relevant items were (Q20) "not able to stop drinking after starting", (Q21) "failed to do what was normally expected", and (Q23) "unable to remember what happened the night before".

Conclusions: These results provide healthcare professionals with a 3-item screening tool for students "problem drinking".

Keywords: Alcohol drinking; Alcohol misuse; College students; Prevention; Screening tool.

Fig. 1.

Projection of variables modalities integrating in the multiple correspondence analysis. Centre of gravity; Item 17: “How many alcoholic drinks do you drink on a single occasion?”; Item 19a: “Have you been drunk in the last year?”; Item 20: “How often during the last year have you found that you were not able to stop drinking once you had started?”; Item 21: “How often during the last year have you failed to do what was normally expected from you because of drinking?”; Item 22: “How often during the last year have you had a feeling of guilt or remorse after drinking?”; Item 23: “How often during the last year, have you been unable to remember what happened the night before because you had been drinking?” and item 28-31: DETA-CAGE.

Fig. 2.

Results of the decision tree (N = 24 689), for students belongs to the simple/non-use group (66.87%), the intermediate group (25.81%) and the problem drinking group (7.32%).