Much recent research on psychosocial factors contributing to drinking problems has focused on the role of expectations about the effects of alcohol. Alcohol expectancies, or individuals' beliefs about the effects of alcohol, are assumed to be an important factor in the initiation and maintenance of drinking. Our understanding of the role of expectancies in problem drinking is dependent on, and should be enhanced by, the availability of scales developed to measure these beliefs. The purpose of this investigation is to construct a scale to measure alcohol expectancies. Although several scales have been constructed to measure expectancies, analyses of these measures have pointed up some difficulties in their psychometric properties, item selection, and scale construction. In particular, a reanalysis of these scales indicates that they do not reflect the independent dimensions predicted by the scale developers. The scale to be developed is designed to fill some of the gaps in existing measures. The scale will be developed and analyzed in two studies. In Study 1, a preliminary scale will be constructed from various sources, including existing questionnaires. These items will be analyzed with principal components analysis, in order to identify underlying clusters of beliefs and to reduce the item pool for the final questionnaire. The items that most reliably measure the factors that emerge will be chosen for the final scale, which will be administered in Study 2. This scale will be analyzed with confirmatory factor analysis to test the adequacy of the factor model resulting from the principal components analysis. In addition, alternative factor models will be tested. At this stage of alcohol expectancy research, further scale analysis is important in both practical and theoretical realms. The construction of an effective scale, limited to those items that measure expectancies most reliably, will be of use in further research. An increased understanding of individuals' belief systems and the relationship of individual beliefs to each other will contribute to alcohol expectancy theory, an area that is promising, but in its infancy.
