A daily measure of positive and negative alcohol expectancies and evaluations: documenting a two-factor structure and...

Despite the documented importance of alcohol outcome expectancies in predicting alcohol use and related consequences, little research has explored within-person variability in expectancies. This article details the construction and psychometric analysis of a measure of alcohol expectancies specifically designed for daily assessment.

We developed a 15-item instrument to measure the likelihood of experiencing various outcomes from drinking, as well as the subjective evaluation of these outcomes. College students (N = 352; mean age = 19.7 years, SD = 1.26; 53.4% female) participated in a yearlong study wherein they completed three computerized interviews daily via mobile phones for 2 weeks in each academic quarter. Multilevel exploratory factor analysis was used to examine dimensionality at between-person and within-person levels, and generalizability coefficients were calculated to establish reliability.

Intraclass correlation coefficients were generally between .30 and .40, demonstrating both between-person and within-person variability. Exploratory factor analysis resulted in a two-factor solution of positive and negative effects of alcohol, and two items with equivocal loadings were dropped from the final scale. The two subscales showed excellent reliabilities at within- and between- person levels, and the measure demonstrated good convergent and discriminant validity with a commonly used expectancy measure.

Drinkers hold many expectations about the effects of alcohol, and measures are needed that are designed to capture both stable and context-dependent aspects of these beliefs. Results demonstrated significant day-to-day variation in the strength and valuation of alcohol expectancies, and the scale demonstrated good psychometric properties that establish its appropriateness for use in daily process studies of alcohol use.