Heterogeneity in drinking motives among college student drinkers: a latent profile analysis

Abstract

Scant research has utilized person-centred approaches to investigate associations between patterns of drinking motive facets and alcohol-related outcomes and depressive symptoms. To address this gap, 1,216 first- and second-year Chinese college students (Mean age = 19.14, SD = 0.94, 37.3% male) who had consumed alcohol in the past year were surveyed by questionnaires. Latent profile analysis was used to identify distinct classes based on four drinking motives: enhancement, coping, conformity, and social motives. A 5-profile solution provided the best overall model fit to the data, including the ‘low’ (n = 712; 58.6%), ‘moderate’ (n = 213; 17.5%), ‘high’ (n = 120; 9.9%), ‘high external/low internal reinforcing’ (n = 108; 8.9%), and ‘high positive/low negative reinforcing’ motives groups (n = 63; 5.2%). Students with high drinking motives endorsed the highest levels of alcohol use outcomes and depression symptoms, while reporting the lowest level of drinking refusal self-efficacy. Students with moderate motives tended to occupy the middle position across all outcome variables. Students characterized by high external/low internal motives reported elevated depressive symptoms and drinking-related problems. Those with high positive/low negative motives exhibited high drinking intention and alcohol consumption, but low levels of drinking-related problems and depressive symptoms. These findings shed light on the heterogeneity among college student drinkers, paving the way for targeted alcohol interventions tailored to diverse drinking motive patterns.

Keywords:

• Drinking motives
• alcohol consumption
• alcohol-related problems
• depression
• person-centered analysis

Ethical statement

The research in this paper does not require ethics board approval.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Philosophy and Social Science Planning Project of Zhejiang Province, China (No. 20NDQN266YB).