Who Will Experience the Most Alcohol Problems in College? The Roles of Middle and High School Drinking Tendencies

Associations of childhood poly-adversity with alcohol problems among undergraduates: adolescent alcohol use trajectories and drinker self-schema

OBJECTIVE

Undergraduate drinking is associated with childhood adversity, early alcohol experience, and drinker self-schema. However, the pathway linking childhood adversity to undergraduate drinking problems remains undefined. This study aimed to identify the effects of childhood poly-adversity on the sequelae of adolescent alcohol-use trajectory, drinker self-schema, and alcohol problems among undergraduates. We also examined whether adolescent alcohol-use trajectory and drinker self-schema mediated the effects of childhood poly-adversity on undergraduate alcohol problems.

METHODS

Baseline data from an ongoing prospective study, which included 851 first- and second-year full-time college students in Taiwan, were used. An anonymous online questionnaire was administered.

RESULTS

The results showed that low poly-adversity and high poly-adversity were associated with the mean of initial alcohol use frequency during adolescence and further alcohol problems at college than those with no adversity. High poly-adversity was also associated with the increase in alcohol use frequency during adolescence. Both initial and increase in alcohol use frequency were associated with higher drinker self-schema scores and further alcohol problems. The indirect effects of high poly-adversity on undergraduate alcohol problems were mediated through adolescent alcohol-use trajectories and drinker self-schema.

CONCLUSION

Findings suggest that early identification of childhood poly-adversity and interventions to decrease adolescent drinking may prevent the formation of drinker self-schema and reduce undergraduate drinking problems.

Does abstaining from alcohol in high school moderate intervention effects for college students? Implications for tiered intervention strategies

Brief motivational intervention (BMI) and personalized feedback intervention (PFI) are individual-focused brief alcohol intervention approaches that have been proven efficacious for reducing alcohol use among college students and young adults. Although the efficacy of these two intervention approaches has been well established, little is known about the factors that may modify their effects on alcohol outcomes. In particular, high school drinking may be a risk factor for continued and heightened use of alcohol in college, and thus may influence the outcomes of BMI and PFI. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether high school drinking was associated with different intervention outcomes among students who received PFI compared to those who received BMI. We conducted moderation analyses examining 348 mandated students (60.1% male; 73.3% White; and 61.5% first-year student) who were randomly assigned to either a BMI or a PFI and whose alcohol consumption was assessed at 4-month and 15-month follow-ups. Results from marginalized zero-inflated Poisson models showed that high school drinking moderated the effects of PFI and BMI at the 4-month follow-up but not at the 15-month follow-up. Specifically, students who reported no drinking in their senior year of high school consumed a 49% higher mean number of drinks after receiving BMI than PFI at the 4-month follow-up. The results suggest that alcohol consumption in high school may be informative when screening and allocating students to appropriate alcohol interventions to meet their different needs.

Sensation Seeking and Adolescent Drinking: Do Protective Behavioral Strategies Lower Risk?

Using a cross-sectional design, we examined protective behavioral strategies (PBS) as a moderator of the relationship between sensation seeking and hazardous drinking and alcohol-related consequences among high school seniors (N = 212). Hierarchical regression analyses indicated sensation seeking was a significant predictor of binge drinking (β = .65, p < .001), pre-partying (β = .71, p < .001), gaming (β = .75, p < .001), and alcohol-related consequences (β = .69, p < .001). Further, PBS moderated these relationships such that among high sensation seeking adolescents, PBS use was associated with better outcomes, including lower levels of binge drinking (β = -.37, p < .01), pre-partying (β = -.44, p < .01), gaming (β = -.31, p < .05), and alcohol-related consequences (β = -.53, p < .001). We discuss counseling implications, including assessment and harm reduction strategies focusing on PBS to reduce hazardous drinking among high sensation seeking adolescents.

Can Web-based preenrollment alcohol brief interventions be effective screening tools? Precollege drinking behavior predicts college retention and alcohol violations

Objective: To test if precollege drinking data gathered during an online brief intervention are associated with problems and could inform screening for campus alcohol prevention efforts. Participants: Two cohorts of incoming students (N = 5300). Method: Precollege alcohol drinking was gathered through an online preenrollment alcohol brief intervention. Drop out was obtained from university records. On-campus alcohol violations were obtained from university judicial affairs, and off-campus alcohol citations were obtained from the city police. The 2011 cohort was tracked for 4 years, the 2012 cohort for 3 years. Results: Precollege abstaining and heavy drinking were significantly associated with retention and alcohol violations, even with ethnicity, residency, and gender controlled. Association of precollege drinking with later college problems extended beyond the first year and affected retention up to four years of enrollment. Conclusions: The findings support using data from preenrollment alcohol brief interventions as screening tools to customize further campus alcohol interventions.

The impact of opioid use disorder on levels of educational attainment: Perceived benefits and consequences

BACKGROUND/AIMS

Adolescents and young adults have the highest rates of opioid use, and despite shared risk-factors such as mental health and social pressures, there is little information on the relationship between education and opioid use disorder. In this study, we sought to assess differences in educational attainment between opioid users and the general population, and the impact of opioid use on one's education.

METHODS

Patients (N = 14,349) entering opioid treatment programs across the United States were surveyed on educational attainment from 2010 to 2018. Data were compared to estimates from an annual survey administered by the US Census. A follow-up sub-set of opioid users (N = 240) was interviewed to add context and expand on the structured survey.

RESULTS

Nearly one-third (32.2%) of the US population is estimated to have earned a bachelor's/advanced degree, compared to just 7.8% of treatment-seeking opioid users. Over half of follow-up respondents (57.5%) reported initiating regular opioid use while attending an educational institution. The majority (68.0%) also indicated opioids negatively impacted their education, with drug-seeking behavior prioritized over attendance and academic performance. Perceived benefits included cognitive enhancement and therapeutic value for anxiety/depression.

CONCLUSIONS

Our data suggest that opioid users achieve lower levels of education, which may result in both individual and economic costs. Prevention programs need to not only include education-specific risk factors (e.g., social norms), but underlying precipitators such as mental health, stigma, and the myth of risk-free cognitive enhancement. Opioid specific services should be available and disseminated to student populations, including certification of campus physicians to provide buprenorphine maintenance.

Age of Drinking Initiation as a Mediator of the Relationship between Sensation Seeking and Heavy Drinking among High School Seniors

Sensation seeking has been identified as a significant risk factor for adolescent alcohol use. Little is known, however, about the process by which sensation seeking impacts heavy alcohol use. The current study used structural equation modeling (SEM) to examine the relationships among sensation seeking, age of drinking initiation, and heavy alcohol use in a sample of high school seniors (N = 221). Results supporting age of drinking initiation as a mediator of the relationship between sensation seeking and heavy alcohol use. Implications include providing personality-targeted prevention to adolescents who display sensation seeking traits to delay drinking initiation among these students.

Altered brain cortical maturation is found in adolescents with a family history of alcoholism

Substance-naïve offspring from high-density alcohol use disorder (AUD) families exhibit altered subcortical brain volumes structurally and altered executive-functioning and emotion-processing functionally, compared with their peers. However, there is a dearth of literature exploring alterations of cortical thickness (CTh) in this population. T1-weighted structural brain MRI was acquired in 75 substance-naïve male offspring of treatment-seeking early onset (<25 years) AUD patients with high familial loading of AUDs (≥2 affected relatives) (FHP) and 65 age-matched substance-naïve male controls with negative family history from the community. Surface-based CTh reconstruction was done using FreeSurfer. Univariate general linear models were implemented at each vertex using SurfStat, controlling for age (linear and quadratic effects), and head size, to examine the main effect of familial AUD risk on CTh and its relationship with externalizing symptom score (ESS). A Johnson-Neyman procedure revealed that the main effect of familial AUD risk on CTh was seen during adolescence, where the FHP group had thicker cortices involving bilateral precentral gyri, left caudal middle frontal gyrus (MFG), bilateral temporo-parietal junction, left inferior-frontal gyrus and right inferior-temporal gyrus. Thicker cortices in left MFG and inferior-parietal lobule were also associated with greater ESS within both groups. More importantly, these group differences diminished with age by young adulthood. Familial AUD risk is associated with age-related differences in maturation of several higher order association cortices that are critical to ongoing development in executive function, emotion regulation and social cognition during adolescence. Early supportive intervention for a delay in alcohol initiation during this critical phase may be crucial for this at-risk population.

Data mining techniques for drug use research

Drug use motives are relevant to understand substance use amongst students. Data mining techniques present some advantages that can help to improve our understanding of drug use issue. The aim of this paper is to explore, through data mining techniques, the reasons why students use drugs. A random cluster sampling of schools was conducted in the island of Mallorca. Participants were 9300 students (52.9% girls) aged between 14 and 18 years old (M = 15.59, SD = 1.17). They answered an anonymous questionnaire about the frequency and type of drug used, as well as the motives. Five classifiers techniques are compared; all of them have much better performance (% of correct classifications) than the simplest classifier (more repeated category: drug use/never drug use) in all the compared drugs (alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, cocaine). Nevertheless, alcohol and tobacco have the lower percentage of correct classifications concerning the drug use motives, whereas these use motives have better classification performance when predicts cannabis and cocaine use. When we analyse the specific motives that better predicts the category classification (drug use/never drug use), the following reasons are highlighted in all of them: "pleasant activity" (most frequent among drug users), and "friends consume" and "addiction" (both of them most frequent among never drug users). These results relate to the social dimension of drug use and agree with the statement that environmental context influences adolescent's involvement in risk behaviours. Implications of these results are discussed.

A screening focusing on aftereffects of alcohol consumption in a student population. A National cross-sectional survey

INTRODUCTION

Students overestimate alcohol consumption of those around them and underestimate their own, so that quantitative approach may not be the most relevant to assess students' drinking. The main objective was to provide an appropriate tool for screening for students with potential drinking problems.

METHODS

A multicentre cross-sectional survey was conducted by internet between February and June, 2013 in France. Thirteen questions explored alcohol consumption, including 8 concerning after-effects of drinking episodes (4 items of the AUDIT) and alcohol behaviour (CAGE test). A multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) was conducted to identify profiles of student's alcohol consumption. Partitioning methods were used to group students by mode of alcohol use. The most relevant items included in the MCA were identified. Three questions were identified as most pertinent among the students with potential drinking problems and ranked by a decision tree with the Chi-square Automatic Interaction Detector method. Finally, we assessed the generalisation of the model.

RESULTS

A total of 36,427 students participated in the survey: 25,679 were women (70.5% of respondents), sex ratio 0.42 and mean aged 21.2 (sd 3.7 years). Among those who had experimented with alcohol (N = 33,113), three consumption profiles were identified: "simple/non-use" (66.9%), "intermediate consumption" (25.9%) and "problem drinking" (7.2%). For the latter group, the three most relevant items were (Q20) "not able to stop drinking after starting", (Q21) "failed to do what was normally expected", and (Q23) "unable to remember what happened the night before".

CONCLUSIONS

These results provide healthcare professionals with a 3-item screening tool for students "problem drinking".

Is Binge Drinking Onset Timing Related to Academic Performance, Engagement, and Aspirations Among Youth in the COMPASS Study?

BACKGROUND

Some evidence suggests early initiation of alcohol use is associated with academic underachievement; however, substance use onset is an ambiguous concept, resulting in mixed findings across studies. Moreover, the quantity of early use is likely an important determinant. Binge drinking is a common pattern among younger cohorts, and is shown to magnify the risk of related problems.

OBJECTIVES

The current study explored how students who initiated binge drinking early (grade 10 or earlier) or later in high school (grade 11 or 12) differed in relation to a variety of academic indices.

METHODS

The sample consisted of 19,764 grade 9 to 12 students with at least 2 years of linked-longitudinal data from Year 1(Y₁: 2012-2013), Year 2(Y₂: 2013-2014), and Year 3(Y₃: 2014-2015) of the COMPASS study. Separate multinomial GEE models tested the likelihood of different responses to outcome measures of academic goals, engagement, preparedness, and performance based on the timing of binge drinking onset. Models adjusted for binge drinking initiation in varying frequencies, gender, grade, race/ethnicity, and smoking.

RESULTS

Compared to students with earlier onsets of binge drinking, youth with later onsets were more likely to regularly attend class, complete their homework, value good grades, achieve high English or Math marks, have graduate/professional degree ambitions, and expect to obtain a college/trade school diploma after high school, yet they were less likely to expect to achieve a bachelor's degree.

CONCLUSION

Results highlight the importance of substance use prevention programs targeting early adolescents. Both delaying and preventing binge drinking have the potential to improve scholastic outcomes.

An Examination of the Relationship Between Consequence-Specific Normative Belief Patterns and Alcohol-Related Consequences Among College Students

BACKGROUND

Research has previously identified a high-risk subgroup of college students who experience high levels of multiple and repeated alcohol-related consequences (MRC group). The purpose of this study was to examine the association between consequence-specific normative influences and experiencing multiple and repeated drinking-related consequences using a person-centered approach. Normative subgroups were identified using latent profile analysis (LPA), which were then used to predict MRC group status at 6-month follow-up.

METHODS

First-year college student drinkers (N = 2,024) at a large northeastern university completed online surveys during the fall and spring semesters of their freshman year. Retention was high with 92% of invited participants completing T2, of which the MRC group accounted for 27%.

RESULTS

Three student profiles were identified from LPA on T1 data: Nonpermissive Parents (77%), Positive Peer and Parent Norms (21%), and Permissive Parents (3%). Logistic regression revealed that both the Positive Peer and Parent Norms and Permissive Parents profiles had significantly higher odds of MRC group membership at follow-up (1.81 and 2.78 times greater, respectively).

CONCLUSIONS

The results suggest value in prevention efforts that include normative beliefs about alcohol-related consequences. Further, parental norms in particular have the potential to enhance interventions, especially through direct communication of disapproval for experiencing consequences.