title: Alcohol attitudes, motives, norms, and personality traits longitudinally classify nondrinkers, moderate drinkers, and binge drinkers using discriminant function analysis.
abstract: Binge drinking is commonly defined in the literature as consuming at least 5 drinks for males and 4 drinks for females. These quantities correspond to approximately a blood alcohol concentration of 0.08%, the level of intoxication making it illegal to drive in the United States.
  
  
  
  The study scrutinized the longitudinal classification of three drinker types using male (n=155) and female (n=351) college students. Measures of personality (sensation seeking, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness), alcohol attitudes, alcohol motivations (social, coping, enhancement, and conformity), and alcohol social norms (typical students, friends, closest friends, and parents) were administered at Time 1. Drinker type (nondrinkers, moderate drinkers, or binge drinkers) was assessed one month later.
  
  
  
  Discriminant function analyses revealed that the set of measures statistically distinguished among the three drinker types. The first function was significant and yielded high loadings for attitudes, social motives, enhancement motives, coping motives, closest friend norms, and friend norms for both genders. Model classification accuracy was 73% for the male and 67% female samples. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) compared mean differences in a 2 (gender: males or females)×3 (drinker type: nondrinkers, moderate drinkers, or binge drinkers) design. Measures systematically differing across all pairwise comparisons of the three drinker types, starting from the strongest effect (eta-squared), were as follows: alcohol attitudes, social motives, enhancement motives, closest friend norms, friend norms, coping motives, sensation seeking, and extraversion.
  
  
  
  Attitude, motivation, and norm variables tended to be more important than personality in distinguishing drinker types. Considering the malleability of attitudes and belief motivations, the risk variables of alcohol attitudes, social motives, and enhancement motives identified in this research warrant consideration in prevention and campaign efforts targeting problematic drinking.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, 1420 Austin Bluffs Pkwy, Colorado Springs, CO 80918, USA. Electronic address: alac@uccs.edu.
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Lac
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Claremont Graduate University, 150 E. 10th St., Claremont, CA 91711, USA. Electronic address: candice.donaldson@cgu.edu.
authors.forename: Candice D
authors.initials: CD
authors.lastname: Donaldson
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D064829:Alcohol Abstinence / Q000523:psychology*; D000428:Alcohol Drinking / Q000523:psychology*; D001290:Attitude; D063425:Binge Drinking / Q000523:psychology; D016002:Discriminant Analysis; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D010551:Personality; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D066262:Social Norms; D013334:Students; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Alcohol; Binge drinkers; Binge drinking; Heavy alcohol use