What Is Pregaming and How Prevalent Is It Among U.S. College Students? An Introduction to the Special Issue on Pregaming

ABSTRACT

Pregaming (or prepartying) can be defined as drinking before going to an event or gathering. The heavy consumption of alcohol and resulting negative consequences that are associated with pregaming have prompted scholars to investigate this risky drinking practice. Indeed, research on college pregaming has grown considerably within the past decade, with over 70 articles published since the seminal empirical studies on pregaming were published in 2007. This special issue in Substance Use & Misuse seeks to address a number of topics on pregaming among U.S. college students that are not well understood. The articles in this special issue explore pregaming behaviors among particular subgroups of students (i.e., college freshmen; postgraduates) as well as the following topics as they pertain to pregaming: exposure to trauma, emotion regulation, social norms, pregaming motives, protective behavioral strategies, and intervention efforts. This prologue to the special issue will discuss key points regarding the definition of pregaming, present an overview of the prevalence rates of pregaming among U.S. college students within the past decade, and introduce articles that advance the understanding of factors that contribute to the high-risk drinking context of pregaming.

KEYWORDS:

• Pregaming
• prepartying
• predrinking
• alcohol use
• prevalence
• definition
• college students

Notes

1 We searched PsycINFO, Web of Science, and Google Scholar for refereed articles on pregaming published since 2007 using the following keywords: prepart^*, pre-part^*, pregam^*, pre-gam^*, frontload^*, front-load^*, pre-drink^*, predrink^*, pregaming^*, prepartying^*, pre-drinking^*, or predrinking^*. Results were as of March 1, 2016.

2 We elected not to report the prevalence rates from studies (e.g., Ahmed, Hustad, LaSalle, & Borsari, 2014; Haas, Smith, & Kagan, 2013; LaBrie, Hummer, Pedersen, Lac, & Chithambo, 2012; Pedersen, LaBrie, & Kilmer, 2009) that used samples that were identical to, or consisted of the vast majority of participants from, other studies described in Table 1.

3 When describing each study, we used the term (i.e., pregaming or prepartying) that the authors used in their article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Byron L. Zamboanga

Byron L. Zamboanga, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at Smith College. His research examines cognitive, social, and cultural correlates of risky drinking practices among adolescents and young adults. Dr. Zamboanga guest edited this special issue with Dr. Janine V. Olthuis.

Janine V. Olthuis

Janine V. Olthuis, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of New Brunswick–Fredericton. Her research examines the psychosocial contributors to adolescent and young adult alcohol use, with a particular focus on investigating the factors that put student-athletes at increased risk. Her second line of research is aimed at increasing access to mental health interventions (e.g., via distance delivery, transdiagnostic treatments, and exercise-based interventions). Dr. Olthuis was a co-guest editor of this special issue along with Dr. Byron L. Zamboanga.