Racial, ethnic, and sex differences in heavy drinking and negative alcohol-related consequences in a national sample of NCAA student-athlete drinkers

Abstract

Objective: Athletic involvement is linked to increased risk for heavy alcohol use among college students. We examined whether student-athletes from diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds differ with respect to heavy drinking and related consequences. Method: Participants were 15,135 student-athlete drinkers (50.7% female) from 170 NCAA member institutions who participated in an online study. Results: Findings from our hierarchical linear models indicated that being a male student-athlete was associated with an increased likelihood of high intensity drinking (10/8 + drinks/per sitting for males/females) for White, Asian American/Pacific Islander, and Black student-athletes, but not for Hispanic student-athletes. Additionally, being a female student-athlete was associated with higher levels of negative alcohol-related consequences across all racial/ethnic groups. Finally, at similar drink quantities, compared to being a White student-athlete, being an Asian American/Pacific Islander student-athlete was associated with higher levels of alcohol-related consequences. Conclusions: Student-athlete drinkers are not homogeneous with respect to heavy drinking and related consequences.

Keywords:

• Alcohol-related consequences
• heavy episodic drinking
• high intensity drinking
• student-athletes

Conflict of interest disclosure

Drs. Martin, Meca, Olthuis, and Zamboanga serve as Research Affiliates for the Institute to Promote Athlete Health and Wellness (IPAHW; Directed by Dr. David L. Wyrick) at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro (UNCG). They also serve as co-investigators for this study, the College Athlete Risky Drinking Study (CARDS), and received an honorarium from the IPAHW at the UNCG for their assistance with the study design and project implementation of CARDS.

Table 1. Descriptives for total sample of past 30-day drinkers.

Data availability statement

The data underlying this article can be shared upon reasonable request to the corresponding author but will be contingent upon approval from the principal investigator’s institutional ethics review board.

Notes

a Intraclass correlations were .06 for HED, .05 for HID, and .02 for consequences. While this suggests that the majority of variance in these outcomes (94%, 95%, and 98%, respectively) was at the person- rather than university-level, appropriate model specification accounts for university-level variability.

b Due to the low number of student-athletes who self-identified as American Indian/Native American or Other, these participants were not included in multilevel analyses.