High-risk alcohol use behavior and daily academic effort among college students

Abstract

Objective It is not well understood whether heavy drinking interferes with academics on specific days or if this relationship simply reflects between-student differences. Participants: N = 736 college students completed 14 consecutive daily assessments during 7 semesters. Methods: Days were classified as non-drinking, moderate drinking, heavy episodic drinking only (HED-only), or high-intensity drinking (HID) days. Multilevel models tested associations between drinking level and academic behaviors. Results: Students were more likely to skip class after engaging in HED-only or HID the previous day. On weekdays, students spent more time on schoolwork when they did not drink the previous day and spent less time on schoolwork when they engaged in HED-only and HID the previous day. On weekends, students spent less time on schoolwork after HED-only days. Conclusions: Heavy drinking is associated with lower academic effort the next day, highlighting the need for college programs targeting heavy alcohol use prevention and daily decision making.

Keywords:

• Academic effort
• college
• heavy alcohol use
• skipping class

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) (R01 AA016016 to Jennifer L. Maggs) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) (T32 DA017629 to Linda M. Collins). NIAAA and NIDA had no role in the study design, collection, analysis, or interpretation of the data, writing the manuscript, or the decision to submit the paper for publication.