Drinking motives and alcohol consumption behaviors among young French people

Abstract

Introduction: Numerous studies suggest that social, enhancement, conformity and coping drinking motives each lead to unique behavioral patterns related to alcohol consumption. Recently it has been suggested to study specific coping motives that distinguish feelings of anxiety and depression. This study aims primarily to 1) psychometrically validate the recent five factor questionnaire of drinking motives among young French people, 2) explore differences in mean endorsements of motives across age and sex and 3) explore the concurrent validity of drinking motives by studying their associations with alcohol consumption behaviors.

Methods: The French Modified Drinking Motives Questionnaire Revised and the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test were administered to 314 university students and 193 high school students.

Results: The 5-factor model of drinking motives provided a good fit to the data and a better fit than the 4-factor model. Conformity motives were more strongly endorsed among high school students than among university students (d=0.26). Social motives were more endorsed by men than by women (d=0.47), as were enhancement motives (d=0.48). Our study suggests that each of the studied motives transcribes a specific set of drinking behaviors.

Conclusions: Researchers and practitioners could effectively use this conception of drinking motives in order to better understand and prevent problematic alcohol use among young people.

Keywords: Alcohol; Audit; France; Motivation; Psychometrics; Young people.