Original article
Taking up binge drinking in college: the influences of person, social group, and environment

https://doi.org/10.1016/S1054-139X(02)00457-3Get rights and content

Abstract

Purpose

To identify person, social group, and environmental factors associated with uptake of binge drinking among a national sample of college students.

Methods

Using self-reported responses of students in the 1999 Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study (CAS), we regressed conceptually important predictors of binge drinking onto a dichotomized variable describing uptake in the freshman year. This was a random sample of full-time undergraduates provided by the registrar at each participant school (n = 119). For this study, we analyzed data describing a subset of the total sample comprising first year students aged ≤19 years, excluding transfers (n = 1894). The student CAS is a 20-page voluntary, anonymous mailed questionnaire containing student reports about their alcohol and substance use, school activities, and background characteristics. Analyses included univariate and multivariate logistic regression adjusting for school response rate and using the Generalized Estimating Equations (GEE) in the Statistical Analysis Software package to handle the within-college clustering owing to the sampling scheme.

Results

College students who reported that they were exposed to “wet” environments were more likely to engage in binge drinking than were their peers without similar exposures. Wet environments included social, residential, and market surroundings in which drinking is prevalent and alcohol cheap and easily accessed. Findings held up in multivariate analyses that included variables describing person and social group characteristics. Students who picked up binge drinking in college also were more likely than their peers to report inflated definitions of binge drinking and more permissive attitudes about appropriate ages for legal consumption.

Conclusions

Binge drinking can either be acquired or avoided in college among students who report they did not binge drink in high school. Reducing college binge uptake may require efforts to limit access/availability, control cheap prices, and maximize substance free environments and associations.

Section snippets

Methods

Using first-year college students’ retrospective reports about their drinking in their last year of high school and currently, we compared students who acquired binge drinking in college (referred to as the uptake group) with students who did not (referred to as the non-uptake group). We used descriptive and multivariate statistics to analyze self-report data from the 1999 Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study (CAS). Student-level data were analyzed together with

Data analysis

Analyses were performed using the SAS statistical package [31]. Logistic regression was used to model the univariate associations among uptake and predictor variables describing sociodemographic characteristics, prior drinking behaviors, social affiliations and influences, alcohol-related norms, perceived accessibility of alcohol, and other risk behaviors. We built a multivariate model using a sequential modeling strategy in which subsets of conceptually linked predictors were entered into

Sample characteristics of uptake and non-uptake groups

The survey sample included 1894 college students, all of whom were in their first year of college and aged ≤19 years. Approximately one-third of the sample was male. Of the total sample, 36% (n = 683) reported that they abstained from alcohol in the past year and another 38% (n = 717) reported they drank but did not binge. These groups comprise the non-uptake group, which serves at the reference for all analyses. The remaining 26% (n = 494) comprise the uptake group, of which 66% (n = 328)

Discussion

Young people who reported that they came from, socialized within, or were exposed to, “wet” environments were more likely to pick up binge drinking in college than were their peers without similar exposures. Wet environments included friendship networks and affiliations within which binge drinking is common and endorsed, social, residential, and market surroundings in which drinking is prevalent and alcohol easy to access and cheap. Young people who picked up binge drinking in college were more

Conclusions

Binge drinking can either be acquired or avoided in college among students who report that they did not binge drink in high school. Reducing binge drinking may require efforts to limit access/availability, control cheap prices, and maximize substance-free environments and associations.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. For their assistance in the conceptual development of this work the authors thank Drs. Seth Emont and Hang Lee.

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    Copyright © 2002 Society for Adolescent Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.