EXAMINATION OF A 3-DIMENSIONAL DRINKING MOTIVES QUESTIONNAIRE IN A YOUNG-ADULT UNIVERSITY-STUDENT SAMPLE

The literature on drinking motives suggests that individuals drink for three distinct reasons: coping motives (CM: to reduce and/or avoid ne gative emotional states); social motives (SM: to affiliate with others ); and enhancement motives (EM: to facilitate positive emotions). Coop er, Russell, Skinner and Windle (1992) [Psychological Assessment, 4, 1 23-132] developed a 3-dimensional self-report instrument, the Drinking Motives Questionnaire (DMQ), with subscales designed to assess relati ve frequency of drinking for each of these three motives. This study w as designed to examine the psychometric properties of the DMQ in a lar ge sample of young adult university students. Three hundred and fourte en students voluntarily served as subjects; 266 students (85% of the t otal sample; 196F and 70M) reported drinking on the DMQ. These student s were divided into two age groups [20 yr and under (n = 117); 21 yr a nd older (n = 149)]. Analyses of variance indicated: (a) main effects of gender, with men scoring significantly higher on the DMQ-EM subscal e and tending to score higher on the DMQ-SM subscale when compared to women; (b) a main effect of age group on the DMQ-EM subscale, with you nger students scoring significantly higher than older students; and (c ) a significant main effect of drinking motive, with the most relative ly frequent drinking reported for SM and the least for CM overall. Alt hough mild-to-moderate shared variance between subscales was noted, th e three subscales of the DMQ were found to possess adequate-to-high le vels of internal consistency. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) sho wed that the hypothesized 3-factor model provided a better fit than ei ther a unidimensional or 2-factor model in explaining the underlying s tructure of the DMQ. Some suggestions for improvements in DMQ item con tent are made. The present results replicate and extend previous findi ngs by Cooper and colleagues to a sample of university students, and s upport the utility of using the DMQ in future investigations of the dr inking motives of young adults.