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Jessica Sprague

Chemical Dependencies Online


Article #1

Hypothesis:
Research has been conducted regarding the effect of social motives on the amount college
students drink. The authors of this study hypothesized that there would be a positive correlation
between social motives and recent alcohol use (Brown, Grant, Moreno, 2014, p. 96)

Method:
The point of this research is to view the correlations between social motives, amount of
drinking, and college friendships. A final sample of 72 college freshmen were recruited from an
already on-going study that was examining alcohol and social media use (Brown, Grant, Moreno,
2014, p. 97). The participants were invited via phone and e-mail to participate in an hour-long
interview with a trained graduate student and were also offered 50.00$ as compensation for their
time (Brown, Grant, Moreno, 2014, p. 97). Social drinking motives were the first to be recorded.
Participants were asked how much they agree with certain statements based off of the Drinking
Motives Questionnaire and had to answer based on a four-point scale. Examples of these
statements include I drink because it is what most of my friends do when we get together. The
responses given by participants are summed up for a total social drinking motives score. The
amount of recent drinking was assessed with a 28-day Timeline Followback (Brown, Grant,
Moreno, 2014, p. 97). For each of the past 28 days, participants must recall the exact number of
alcoholic drinks they had consumed. Then the exact number of drinks and number of days where

drinks were consumed, were calculated. In order to measure how many new friendships college
students made, the question How many casual and how many close friends have you made since
coming to college? was asked. The exact definitions of casual and close friends were given to
participants. All statistical data was then analyzed using SPSS version 19 (Brown, Grant,
Moreno, 2014, p. 98). 20

Results:
Social drinking motive scores ranged from 6 to 20 and had an average of 12.9. On
average, participants consumed 33.4 alcoholic beverages and engaged in six drinking episodes in
the past 28 days (Grant, 98). Participants also reported having made an average of 25.2 casual
friendships and 5.4 close friendships since arriving at college (Grant, 98). Gender was controlled
throughout this experiment. The hypothesis that there would be a positive correlation between
social motives and recent alcohol use proved to be true. Social motives significantly predicted
both the quantity and frequency of drinking over the past month (Grant, 99). It was also found
that the quantity of past month drinking was not associated with the number of friends college
students made.

Discussion:
Strengths of this study include controlled gender, the fact that students were compensated
for their time and the fact that results from this research corresponds with national results;
suggesting that this study may be representative. Often times males report a higher average
drinking amount than females, they are also likely to consume more alcohol in a given time
period due to a bigger body weight. This was noted and controlled in the study.

A limitation of this study was that the samples of participants were only pulled from one
University. If this same study was done but using five to ten universities, the results would be
much more accurate to real life circumstances. Another limitation to this study was that the
reciprocal confirmation of friendships was not taken, meaning someone could consider
themselves a friend to someone else, but the other person may not share those same feelings
(Brown, Grant, Moreno, 2014, p. 99). This research may be used in the real world because often
times college freshmen are nervous about making the transition, and being able to know that the
amount they drink will not effect the amount of friends they make, may calm those nerves.
Future studies should focus on using a larger sample size and also getting to the root of other
reasons why college students may drink, for example depression, anxiety, ect.

Reference
Grant, A. Brown, B. & Moreno, M. (2013). The disparity between social drinking
motives and social outcomes: A new perspective on college student drinking. College Student
Journal, 12(1), 96-100. doi:

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