MEASURING EXCESSIVE ALCOHOL-USE IN COLLEGE DRINKING CONTEXTS - THE DRINKING CONTEXT SCALE

Research on youthful drinking has shown that the greatest risks associ ated with alcohol abuse are related to contextual factors that may pot entiate heavy drinking as well as increase risks for adverse consequen ces. These contextual factors include interacting psychological, inter personal, and environmental dimensions of alcohol use. However, despit e considerable college drinking research to identify these factors, fe w formal instruments have been produced for measuring excessive drinki ng in multidimensional contexts. The current study of 197 college stud ents who were cited their first time for breaking university drinking rules focuses on the development and validation of a scale for measuri ng the likelihood of excessive drinking across an array of psychologic al, interpersonal and situational contexts resulting in the 23-item Dr inking Context Scale (DCS). Three distinct factors emerged defining Co nvivial drinking, Private Intimate drinking, and drinking as a form of Negative Coping. These three factors explained 61.5% of the variance after principal components analysis and varimax rotation, showed excel lent internal reliabilities, and were moderately intercorrelated. MANO VA analysis demonstrated concurrent validity with the Quality Frequenc y Index (QFI) and a modified version of the Michigan Alcoholism Screen ing Test (MAST). Implications for further research with the DCS are su ggested. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.