Personality or pathology? Predictors of early substance use in first-year college students

Abstract

Research suggests that students entering their first year of college may be at significant risk for developing substance use problems by relying on substances to regulate their emotions.

Objective

The aim of the current study was to examine the dual role of personality and psychopathology in predicting substance use among first-year students.

Participants

103 first-semester undergraduate students were recruited via the university subject pool.

Methods

Participants completed personality questionnaires, structured clinical interviews, followed by the completion of diary entries each week reporting on substance use throughout their first semester.

Results

Results indicated that a past diagnosis of an affective (mood/anxiety/stress) disorder was the most significant predictor of substance use. Personality and current psychopathology had no association to substance use.

Conclusion

This finding is consistent with developmental models of substance use relating to emotion-related disease and suggests that greater nuance is needed in understanding substance use risk in college students.

Keywords:

• Behavioral activation
• experience-sampling
• personality
• psychopathology
• substance use

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 of America and received approval from the Kent State University.

Funding

No funding was used to support this research and/or the preparation of the manuscript.

Notes

1 Six participants were excluded due to insufficient diary completion. Based on recommendations, participants who completed less than 2 SDs below the mean were excluded.⁴³ Five additional participants were excluded due to insufficient completion of baseline questionnaires. There was no difference between participants excluded or included based on demographics or key outcome indicators.

2 We did test a Zero-Inflated Poisson distribution in our analysis to address the high proportion of zeros. However, the zero-inflated Poisson distribution did not significantly improve model fit so we discarded it.

3 We did rerun the analysis without the participants who self-identified as Hispanic and the results were nearly identical.