Objective: Student drinking is largely related to the setting of the drinking occasion as well as to individual psychosocial characteristics. This article assesses the effect of the reasons for drinking on situational alcohol use above and beyond other environmental and individual factors.
Method: The data were drawn from the Canadian Campus Survey, a national mail survey conducted in 1998 with a sample of 8,864 students in 18 universities. Each student provided information on up to five drinking occasions, resulting in 25,347 drinking occasions among 6,598 drinkers. At the individual level, this study focused on the university life experience. At the situational level, information about alcohol intake was recorded relative to why, when, where and with whom drinking occurred and the reasons for drinking.
Results: Our results show that the reasons for drinking explain 8.3% of the variance in individual alcohol intake per occasion at the individual level and 8.1% at the drinking occasion level.
Conclusions: Reasons for drinking and the drinking setting together influence consumption. Moreover, reasons are context specific, because students drink for different reasons in different contexts. Thus, contextual motivational models may be more effective in helping one understand the various pathways to alcohol use and misuse.