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ABSTRACT
It is well-known that college students are at an increased risk for alcohol use and binge drinking compared to their same-age peers who are not in college. We use Moffitt's developmental taxonomy, specifically, her discussion of adolescence-limited offending, to contextualize this finding regarding this minor form of deviance. We also incorporate Arnett's notion of emerging adulthood to argue that the maturity gap, as described by Moffitt, can extend beyond adolescence. The current research used data from Wave III of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N = 4,264). We examined differences in sample characteristics between respondents who were currently enrolled in college full-time and those who were not. We also estimated several logistic regression models to determine how full-time college status and two measures of maturity were correlated with weekly binge drinking. We found that respondents who were full-time college students had an increased risk for binge drinking and were also less mature than their peers. Further analyses indicated that full-time college students were at an increased risk for binge drinking because they lacked maturity and the lack of adult roles that characterize the college years gives students more freedom to binge drink. These results supported both Moffitt's explanation of adolescence-limited offending and Arnett's notion of emerging adults.