Examining daily variability in willingness to drink in relation to underage young adult alcohol use

Abstract

A key component of the Prototype Willingness Model is willingness, which reflects an openness to opportunity to perform a behavior in situations that are conducive to that behavior. Willingness has traditionally been tested using global, hypothetical assessments, and has not been examined at the daily level. We expected to find within-person variability in willingness to drink, such that on days with greater willingness, individuals would report greater drinking. A national sample (N = 288) of young adults aged 18 to 20 (31.60% female) completed a Web-based survey that was comprised of measures of drinking and sexual behavior, including the Timeline Follow-Back (Sobell & Sobell, 1992). Findings show daily variability in willingness to drink (ICC = 0.54), which suggests that there are substantial differences from day-to-day in this drinking-related cognition. Participants drank more on days when individuals also reported feeling more willing to drink than their own average level across the two weeks. Daily process level mechanisms allow greater insight into factors contributing to increased risk in-the-moment, which may point to targets for interventions aimed at improving adolescents' and young adults' abilities to make healthier choices in moments when they may be at greater risk for engaging in risky behaviors.

An Ecological Momentary Assessment of Affect, Mental Health Symptoms, and Decisions to Drink Among First-Year College Women: A Pilot Study

“…Descriptive findings revealed that, although there was significant variation in both intentions and willingness to drink over time, there was more variation in willingness, which extends findings from Lewis et al (2016) who demonstrated high daily variability in willingness to drink. It is possible that in the current sample, there was more variability in willingness to drink than intentions to drink due to the passive nature of willingness, compared to the more active nature of intentions.…”

Fluctuations in progesterone moderate the relationship between daily mood and alcohol use in young adult women

“…Of the non-drinking days, the women selected that they would not have used alcohol, even if given the opportunity to drink, on 154 days (44.4%; option 1), whereas the remaining portion (n=141, 40.3%) indicated that they might have drunk if given the opportunity (option 2-4). This approach to assessing likelihood of alcohol use has been used in previous research (Jackson et al, 2014), and willingness to drink has been associated with actual drinking behavior in a young adult sample (Lewis, et al, 2016). Given the relatively lower response rates to options 2-4 across participants, we integrated the 5-item scale into three items to attain a more meaningful and interpretable outcome variable: (0) no drinking/would not have drunk (option 1; 44.0% of days recorded in the daily logs), (1) no drinking/but might have drunk if given the opportunity (options 2-4; 40.3% of days), and (2) did drink today (option 5; 14.6% of days).…”

Prototype Willingness Model Drinking Cognitions Mediate Personalized Normative Feedback Efficacy

“…The PWM was designed to address the social nature of adolescent or young adult risk behaviors by acknowledging that risk behaviors are often reactions to risk-conducive environments one may encounter rather than intentionally planned behaviors (Gibbons et al 2003). The social reaction pathway of the PWM pertains to unplanned behaviors, which are posited to follow directly from behavioral willingness, which varies in part as a function of descriptive norms, but also varies according to prototypes (Blanton et al 1997; Gerrard et al 2008; Lewis et al 2016; Litt and Lewis 2016; Litt and Stock 2011; Pomery et al 2005; Teunissen et al 2014). Willingness to drink reflects openness to opportunity to drink in situations that are conducive to that behavior.…”