Drinking game play among first-year college student drinkers: An event-specific analysis of the risk for alcohol use and problems

Abstract

Background: College students who play drinking games (DGs) more frequently report higher levels of alcohol use and experience more alcohol-related harm. However, the extent to which they are at risk for increased consumption and harm as a result of DG play on a given event after accounting for their typical DG participation, and typical and event drinking, is unclear. Objectives: We examined whether first-year students consumed more alcohol and were more likely to experience consequences on drinking occasions when they played DGs. Methods: Participants (n = 336) completed up to six web-based surveys following weekend drinking events in their first semester. Alcohol use, DG play, and consequences were reported for the Friday and Saturday prior to each survey. Typical DG tendencies were controlled in all models. Typical and event alcohol use were controlled in models predicting risk for consequences. Results: Participants consumed more alcohol on DG versus non-DG events. All students were more likely to experience blackout drinking consequences when they played DGs. Women were more likely to experience social-interpersonal consequences when they played DGs. Conclusion: DG play is an event-specific risk factor for increased alcohol use among first-year students, regardless of individual DG play tendencies. Further, event DG play signals increased risk for blackout drinking consequences for all students, and social-interpersonal consequences for women, aside from the amount of alcohol consumed on those occasions as well as typical drinking behaviors. Prevention efforts to reduce high-risk drinking may be strengthened by highlighting both event- and person-specific risks of DG play.

• Alcohol use
• consequences
• drinking games
• event-specific framework
• first-year students

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by Award Numbers F31 AA018899, R01 AA015737, and R01 AA019511 from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA).

Notes

¹In addition to the three consequence types, we also examined total consequences as an outcome. A total consequence score was calculated for each event by summing all items (M = 3.93, SD = 4.71). Poisson HLM models were utilized because this variable was positively skewed with a considerable amount of zeros (16). Results indicated that women, students who consumed more alcohol, on average, and students who consumed more than their typical amount on a given drinking event (all ps < 0.01) reported higher total consequence scores. However, neither typical DG tendencies nor event-specific DG play was significantly associated with one’s overall experience of harm on a given event. In addition, there were no significant cross-level gender interactions for these models.