Associations of descriptive and reflective injunctive norms with risky college drinking

The current study describes the relative predictive power of descriptive norms (i.e., how much the target student believes referents "drink until they get drunk") and reflective injunctive norms (i.e., target student's perception of referents' approval of the target student drinking until drunk) across various reference groups. The aim of this study was to gain further insight into which types of norms and reference groups are most highly concurrently correlated with risky drinking. It was hypothesized that both reflective injunctive and descriptive norms would be significantly positively correlated with risky drinking outcomes, and that more proximal reference group norms would be more highly predictive than more distal reference group norms. Participants (N = 837) were college students on the U.S. west coast who completed questionnaires in the context of a longitudinal parent study. Cross-sectional, zero-inflated negative binomial regressions were used to test the relative strengths of correlations between descriptive and reflective injunctive norms (i.e., for typical college students, closest friend, person whose opinion they value most, and closest family member) and risky drinking (i.e., peak alcohol quantity, frequency of heavy drinking episodes, and alcohol-related problems). Findings showed that descriptive and reflective injunctive norms were most consistently, strongly and positively correlated with risky drinking when they involved referents who were closer to the target college drinkers (i.e., closest friend and person whose opinion you value the most). Norms for typical college students were less consistent correlates of risky drinking. These findings may contribute to the knowledge base for enhancing normative reeducation and personalized normative feedback interventions to include more personally salient and powerful normative information.