Development and validation of a brief definitional measure of motives for alcohol use

Abstract

Heavy alcohol use continues to be a prominent national issue. This style of use has been associated with short-term memory issues, impaired social and emotional functioning, death and disability, and diagnosable impairment. Heavy alcohol use also continues to be a significant issue for college students and college-aged peers, and contributes to increased risk of unsafe or unplanned sex, problems with campus police, physical injury, and damage to property in collegiate settings. Efforts to understand heavy alcohol consumption often focus on motives for use. Motives for alcohol use were found to predict alcohol use behaviors, heavy alcohol use and consequences, diagnosable impairment, and consequences experienced in the future. Recent efforts have focused on the development of comprehensive multidimensional questionnaires, with the majority evaluating or comprising three motivational factors, namely coping, social, and enhancement motives. The Desired Effects of Drinking (DEOD) scale is a multidimensional questionnaire of motives based upon such a conceptual model, though the number of items making up the DEOD is substantially larger than other established measures also based upon a three-factor motivational model. This potentially limits the DEOD's utility in both clinical and research settings. However, there is a precedent found in the literature of brief assessment measures being comparable to full-length iterations. The present study aimed to develop and validate a brief definitional measure of drinking motives, based on the theoretical framework utilized by the DEOD. The present study evaluated the construct and concurrent validity of a brief definitional measure of motives for alcohol use.