Characterizing college systems for addressing student alcohol use: latent class analysis of U.S. four-year colleges

The purpose of this study was to assess the status and integration of college systems to address student alcohol use.

We conducted a survey of college leaders (campus administrators, healthcare directors, and enforcement directors) among 569 4-year colleges in the United States. We measured strategies across five key system components: policy, enforcement, education, screening, and intervention/treatment. We used latent class analyses to identify classes of colleges based on their alcohol systems.

We identified three classes of colleges. Thirty-four percent of colleges were in a class that was characterized as having the most strategies relative to the other colleges, including high probabilities for having one of the three policy strategies, both enforcement strategies, two of the three screening strategies, and both intervention strategies. Class 2 colleges were similar to Class 1 colleges but had very low probabilities of having the intervention strategies. Thirty percent of the colleges were in Class 3; these colleges had a low probability of having any of the strategies except two of the three policy strategies.

Many of the colleges had implemented strategies to address student alcohol use across multiple system components, although no class of colleges had implemented all of the identified strategies in each of the five components. Many colleges failed to use complementary strategies, such as having screening but no treatment or intervention services. More research is needed to assess whether class membership is associated with rates of student alcohol use and related problems.