Personal vs Social Motivations of Undergraduates for using Alcohol

Abstract

The personal vs social motivations for using alcohol were assessed for 109 undergraduates attending a midwestern technical university. Analysis indicated that alcohol was consumed more for social than for personal reasons and that men used alcohol more than women for the social reasons of meeting new people and meeting members of the opposite sex and for the personal reason of feeling better about themselves. Use was also associated with being a member of a fraternity or sorority and the total number of campus organizations in which students were involved. These results suggest that alcohol education programs should take into account the motivations on a particular campus for alcohol use.

An examination of the extent to which drinking motives and problem alcohol consumption vary as a function of deprivation, gender and age

“…Problem drinking nevertheless appears to associated with coping motives amongst older populations [29], as it is in younger groups. The relationship between consumption and endorsement of different motives has also been shown to be shaped by gender [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40], suggesting that as well as evolving over time, motivations may change as the product of different experiences [18]. However, research in this area has predominantly utilised samples of specific population subgroups (e.g.…”