Drinking motives, drinking restraint and drinking behaviour among young adults

Abstract

Motives to drink alcohol are widely thought to be the proximal cognitive factors involved in the decision to consume alcohol beverages. However, the ability to restrain drinking may be a more proximal predictor of drinking behavior. The current study examined the relationships between drinking motives, drinking restraint, and both alcohol consumption and alcoholrelated problems in young adults aged 17-34 years. A sample of 221 students and nonstudents completed self-report measures assessing drinking behavior, motives for drinking and drinking restraint. Multiple regression analyses revealed that coping, enhancement and social motives were related to alcohol consumption and alcohol-related problems, while cognitive/emotional preoccupation with drinking was related to all criterion variables. The relationship between coping motives and drinking behavior was mediated by preoccupation with drinking. The results are discussed in light of the roles of drinking motives and drinking restraint in risky drinking among young people. Implications for prevention and early intervention are also discussed.

Motivation for Substance Use: Why Do People Use Alcohol, Tobacco and Marijuana?

“…However, discrepant findings should also be acknowledged, especially those indicating uniqueness of motivation related to specific (il)icit substances. Lyvers et al (2010) argue that additional variables, related to both motives and behavior are at play (e.g. other individual characteristics) and also, although motives are generally thought to be proximal predictors of behavior, in some situations a person may be motivated to behave in a certain way (e.g.…”

“…Motivational models suggest that substance use motives represent the common pathway for its actual use (e.g. Lyvers, Hasking, Hani, Rhodes, & Trew, 2010) and thus present research tries to explore motives for using the most common (il)licit substances: alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana. Cox and Klinger (1988) proposed two underlying dimensions of drinking motives: the source and the valence of the outcomes an individual wants to achieve by drinking.…”

“…Coping motives (reduction or avoidance of negative emotions, boredom, sedative motives) were found to be related to heavier drinking problems (Bradizza, Reifman, & Barnes, 1999;Carey & Correia, 1997;Lyvers et al, 2010), increased levels of alcohol use (Cooper, 1994;Kuntsche, Knibbe, Gmel, & Engels, 2006b), more chronic smoking behavior (Tate et al, 1994), and increased levels of marijuana use (Simons et al, 1998;Lee et al, 2009). Similarly, more salient conformity motives for substance use (reduction or avoidance of social censure, psychosocial motives) were also related to heavier drinking problems (Bradizza et al, 1999;Carey & Correia, 1997;Lyvers et al, 2010), faster smoking rate (Tate et al, 1994), and more pronounced problems related to marijuana use (Simons et al, 1998).…”

“…Coping motives (reduction or avoidance of negative emotions, boredom, sedative motives) were found to be related to heavier drinking problems (Bradizza, Reifman, & Barnes, 1999;Carey & Correia, 1997;Lyvers et al, 2010), increased levels of alcohol use (Cooper, 1994;Kuntsche, Knibbe, Gmel, & Engels, 2006b), more chronic smoking behavior (Tate et al, 1994), and increased levels of marijuana use (Simons et al, 1998;Lee et al, 2009). Similarly, more salient conformity motives for substance use (reduction or avoidance of social censure, psychosocial motives) were also related to heavier drinking problems (Bradizza et al, 1999;Carey & Correia, 1997;Lyvers et al, 2010), faster smoking rate (Tate et al, 1994), and more pronounced problems related to marijuana use (Simons et al, 1998). Enhancement (increase of positive mood states, enjoyment, stimulation) was related to increased levels of alcohol use (Cooper, 1994;Kuntsche et al, 2006b), more chronic smoking behavior and faster smoking rate (Tate et al, 1994), increased levels of marijuana use (Simons et al, 1998;Lee et al, 2009), and more problems associated with marijuana use (Lee, Neighbors, & Woods, 2007), and along with stress relief (coping), was the most commonly reported motive for smoking (Fidler & West, 2009).…”

The DRINC (Drinking Reasons Inter-National Collaboration) project: Rationale and protocol for a cross-national study of drinking motives in undergraduates

“…As such, the first goal of this collaboration is to examine the invariance of the four-factor structure of the measure of drinking motives (Cooper, 1994;Kuntsche & Kuntsche, 2009) across 10 nations. To date, the factor structure has been shown to be highly similar across all countries examined, including the United States, Brazil, Canada, Switzerland, England, Hungary, Australia, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Scotland, Slovakia, and Wales (Crutzen & Kuntsche, 2012;Hauck-Filho, Teixeira, & Cooper, 2012;Kuntsche et al, 2014;Kuntsche, Stewart, & Cooper, 2008;Lyvers, Hasking, Hani, Rhodes, & Trew, 2010;Mazzardis, Vieno, Kuntsche, & Santinello, 2010;Németh et al, 2011). Only a handful of studies have directly compared the structure of motives across countries (Kuntsche et al, 2008;Kuntsche et al, 2014;Németh et al, 2011) and have found support for the invariance of the four-factor structure of drinking motives across the countries compared.…”