Relationships among self-report assessments of craving in binge-drinking university students

To assess the relationships among self-report craving questionnaires, and between craving and alcohol consumption, we administered four previously published measures of craving (Alcohol Urge Questionnaire, Obsessive-Compulsive Drinking Scale, Penn Alcohol Craving Scale, Temptation-Restraint Inventory), five single-item Visual Analog Scales (need, urge, craving, desire, compulsion), and measures of alcohol consumption and drinking consequences to 112 university students attending a large, public state university who reported at least two binge-drinking episodes (5+ drinks in a row by men; 4+ drinks in a row by women) in the previous 30 days. The associations among the multi-item self-report measures of craving were often larger for men than women, but the coefficients were typically statistically significant and meaningful regardless of gender, indicating good convergent validity despite differences in phrasing of items, response formats, and time periods over which craving was assessed. Generally smaller correlations among the VAS items indicated that these five terms were not inter-changeable among themselves (nor were they inter-changeable with scores on the multi-item questionnaires). Similarly to investigations using clinical samples, regression analyses revealed that recent drinking by binge-drinking students was associated with certain measures of self-reported craving.     

Motives for drinking, alcohol consumption, and alcohol-related problems among British secondary-school and university students

Relationships among reasons for drinking, alcohol consumption, and drinking-related problems were assessed among secondary-school students (N=328) and university students (N=74) in North Wales, United Kingdom, and results were compared with results from North America. The ability of drinking reasons to predict drinking problems was tested in both age groups. Khavari Alcohol Test, Quantity-Frequency-Variability Index, Reasons for Drinking Questionnaire, and Rutgers Alcohol Problems Index were used to measure the variables of interest. Regression and mediational analyses indicated that negative reasons were stronger predictors of drinking problems than were positive reasons among both secondary-school and university students. Results also showed that the effect of both positive and negative drinking reasons on alcohol-related problems was partially mediated by alcohol consumption among both secondary-school students and university students. There were different correlates of problematic drinking among younger and older students, which suggest that different types of intervention should be used with the two age groups.