Excessive alcohol consumption is a serious problem in college students. An inverse relationship between religious involvement and alcohol use is well documented in adult and adolescent populations. While numerous suggestions have been advanced regarding this relationship (social control of behavior, socialization into negative attitudes towards drinking, moderation of the impact of distress, etc.), the specific causal mechanisms involved remain unclear. Motivational models of alcohol use specify that motives for drinking and not drinking represent proximal causes of alcohol use that mediate the effects of more distal factors such as expectancies or personality. Studies have supported the mediational role of motives for drinking, however, motives for not drinking have received less attention. Studies of motives for not drinking have often included religious motives, but the items representing these motives have reflected negative attitudes towards alcohol (drinking alcohol is a sin, etc.) rather than anticipated consequences of not drinking (drinking interferes with spiritual growth, my congregation would reject me if I drank, etc.). The long term goals of this project are to improve understanding of the nature of the relationships between spirituality/religiousness and alcohol use; improve understanding of the importance of motives for not drinking in predicting alcohol use; and to generate information that may be of use in preventing or ameliorating the effects of heavy drinking. Phase 1 of the project involves a cross-sectional study of at least 400 college students. Phase 2 is a three wave prospective study, sampling 800 students prior to entry into college and into their second year. In both samples, motives for drinking and not drinking will be examined as mediators of the relationships between religiousness/spirituality and alcohol use. Structural Equation Modeling will be utilized to test mediational pathways cross-sectionally and longitudinally. The cross-sectional sample will allow inclusion of a wider age range of students and inclusion of measures of other known predictors of alcohol use (expectancies and personality) that may be difficult to include in a prospective sample due to limitations on length of questionnaires. We will also use the data from the cross-sectional sample to attempt to develop shorter versions of exogenous variables. In addition, constructs and/or paths that are not significant in the cross-sectional sample may be excluded from the prospective sample to additionally reduce the length of the questionnaire battery. The prospective sample will allow more rigorous tests of mediational hypotheses as well as use of latent growth curve modeling to examine the effects of religious/spiritual variables on change in alcohol use over time. The study will extend an already well-validated model (motives for drinking as proximal causes of alcohol use) by including a set of predictors not examined in previous work (i.e., dimensions of religiousness/spirituality), and by exploring motives for not drinking along with motives for drinking. The project also provides a means of integrating and testing specific hypotheses regarding the causal links between religiousness/spirituality and alcohol use and problems.
| Johnson, Thomas J; Sheets, Virgil L; Kristeller, Jean L (2008) Identifying mediators of the relationship between religiousness/spirituality and alcohol use. J Stud Alcohol Drugs 69:160-70 |
