Drinking Motives, Alcohol Misuse, and Internalizing and Externalizing Psychopathology across College: A Cross-Lagged Panel Study

Abstract

Background: Drinking motives are strong proximal predictors of alcohol use behaviors and may represent a mediational mechanism by which different individual predispositions toward internalizing or externalizing psychopathology lead to the development of alcohol misuse. However, whether the association is due to a causal relationship or a shared etiology (i.e., confounding) is difficult to determine and may change across developmental periods. Methods: This study leveraged a cross-lagged panel design to disentangle the nature of the relationships between self-report measures of drinking motives, alcohol misuse, and internalizing and externalizing psychopathology in a 4-year longitudinal sample of college students (N = 9,889). Results: Results pointed to a putative causal effect of drinking motives on early binge drinking frequency, but the direction of effect later reversed, reflecting a possible developmental shift during college. On the other hand, the relationships between drinking motives and internalizing/externalizing psychopathology appeared to be driven by shared etiology rather than direct causal mechanisms. Conclusions: These findings highlight the distinct and important role of drinking motives in the etiology of alcohol misuse and have implications for the application of tailored prevention and treatment strategies.

Keywords:

• Drinking motives
• cross-lagged
• college students
• longitudinal

Acknowledgements

The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the views of the funding agencies. The funding agencies had no role in the study design, data analysis, manuscript preparation, or decision to submit for publication. We would like to thank Dr. Danielle Dick for founding and directing the Spit for Science Registry from 2011-2022, and the Spit for Science participants for making this study a success, as well as the many University faculty, students, and staff who contributed to the design and implementation of the project. Portions of this work were conducted as part of a PhD dissertation project and have been made available online via ProQuest.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no financial disclosures or potential conflicts of interest.

Data availability statement

Data from this study are available to qualified researchers via dbGaP (phs001754.v2.p1). or via [email protected] to qualified researchers who provide the appropriate signed data use agreement.

Additional information

Funding

Spit for Science has been supported by Virginia Commonwealth University, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) under Grants P20AA017828, R37AA011408, K02AA018755, P50AA022537, and K01AA024152, the National Center for Research Resources under Grant UL1RR031990, and National Institutes of Health Roadmap for Medical Research. This research was also supported by the Center for the Study of Tobacco Products at Virginia Commonwealth University, and by the NIAAA under grant F31AA024378.