Alcohol use, sensation seeking, and the role of gender in the prediction of severe alcohol-related consequences in college students

The PGSP-Stanford Psy.D. Consortium, Palo Alto University, 2013 This study contributes new literature to the larger body of research on college drinking. This study sought to examine alcohol use, sensation seeking, and gender differences in the experience of severe alcohol-related consequences amongst entering college students. Participants included 953 entering freshmen at a Bay Area university who self-identified as 18 years of age or older, had recent experience of drinking alcohol, and who completed the survey during their first academic quarter. Data for this study was collected during the fall follow-up time point of the larger study, which occurred in the beginning weeks of November in each academic year. Participants were asked to complete brief questionnaires regarding demographics, alcohol use over the previous three months, alcohol-related consequences, and they also completed the Brief Sensation Seeking Scale (BSSS). Simple regressions were used to examine the relationships between overall alcohol use (as measured by the Quantity Frequency Index [QFI]), the number of different alcohol-related problems, and sensation seeking tendencies (as measured by the BSSS). Using procedures outlined by Baron and Kenny (1986), a mediational path analysis was implemented to assess the effect of sensation seeking on the relationship between QFI and alcohol-related problems. MANCOVA tests were used to assess the role of gender differences on sensation seeking and a specific set of alcohol-related problems (i.e. Sexual, Physiological, Legal, Social, and Academic). Results show that sensation seeking represents a weak mediator in the overall relationship of QFI and alcohol-related problems among this sample. Even when breaking the sample down between men- and women-only subsamples, sensation seeking appears to possess, at best, a slight mediating effect on the relationship between OFI and problems for men. Results also indicate that there were no significant differences in overall number of problems experienced between genders, however, women reported--to a significant degree--more Sexual and Physiological problems as compared to their male peers. Males, on the other hand, endorsed significantly more problems in Social and Academic functioning as a result of their alcohol use. This data suggests that high sensation seeking may not represent a significant of a predictor of alcohol-related consequences, which is contrary to much of the current literature. Furthermore, this study further evidences that men and women experience significantly different alcohol-related consequences. College drinking prevention and intervention programs should therefore consider that there are differences in the ways that their male and female students experience alcohol use and its related consequences.