Measuring drinking patterns among college students

Alcohol use among college students is of interest to clinicians and researchers. The results of such studies depend on the quality and nature of the measures used. The literature includes a wide variety of operational definitions of drinking patterns, making difficult comparisons across studies. For 109 men and 83 women attending college this paper provides data on the Drinking Practices Questionnaire, a self-report measure of drinking patterns designed specifically for use with college students. The three subscales, Negative Affect, Positive Expectancies, and Negative Consequences, have good internal consistency reliabilities, and scores correlate significantly with measures of problems associated with alcohol use. Appropriate uses of the measure are discussed.