Study strategies and “study drugs”: investigating the relationship between college students’ study behaviors and prescription stimulant misuse

Abstract

Objective

The current study examined the regular use of study strategies between college students who misused prescription stimulants (N = 36) and college students who did not misuse prescription stimulants (N = 298) in an undergraduate sample. Participants: 334 college students at a large, Midwestern university. Methods: Using logistic regression, we examined whether students who misused prescription stimulants did so to compensate for poor study strategies and/or a lack of study strategies overall. We hypothesized that regularly spacing studying, using more study strategies, and using more effective study strategies would predict lower odds of prescription stimulant misuse among students. In contrast, we hypothesized that using more ineffective study strategies would predict higher odds of prescription stimulant misuse. Results: Results indicated that a greater number of total study strategies and effective study strategies, and higher importance of school predicted higher odds of prescription stimulant misuse. Conclusions: Thus, students may not be misusing prescription stimulants as a substitute for effective studying but, rather, to augment effective study habits.

Keywords:

• College students
• prescription stimulants
• study strategies
• substance misuse

Conflict of interest disclosure

The authors have no conflicts of interest to report. The authors confirm that the research presented in this article met the ethical guidelines, including adherence to the legal requirements of the United States and received approval from the Institutional Review Board of Colorado State University.

Data availability statement

Derived data supporting the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author on request.

Notes

1 Students in Introduction to Psychology or Research Methods in Psychology I were given class credit for their participation. Students who elected not to participate were given a comparable alternative assignment.

2 Unless otherwise noted, predictor variables were modeled continuously.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship to the second author under Grant No. DGE-1321845.