Research & Resources

This study examined whether variability in young adult drinking social settings, drinking games/drink price specials, and locations differentiated daily high-intensity drinking (HID) likelihood; whether contexts varied by legal drinking age and college status (i.e., attending a 4-year college full-time); and whether legal drinking age and college status moderated drinking context/intensity associations. Participants were 818 young adults, selected because they were past 30-day drinkers from the 2018 U.S. Monitoring the Future 12th grade national probability sample. Legal drinking age was associated with lower odds of free drinks, but greater odds of drinking at bars/restaurants. College status was associated with lower odds of drinking alone or free drinks, but greater odds of drinking with friends, large groups, pre-gaming, playing drinking games, receiving discounted price drinks, drinking at bars/restaurants, drinking at parties, and having more drinking locations. These findings suggest that incorporating contexts associated with HID into interventions may be a promising approach to reducing HID and related consequences.

This paper, “Alcohol use contexts (social settings, drinking games/specials, and locations) as predictors of high-intensity drinking on a given day among U.S. young adults,” was funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and experimental research.