Affective predictors of day-level impaired control over alcohol use

Impaired control over alcohol use is a core aspect of Alcohol Use Disorder symptomatology. However, research regarding how impaired control manifests at the day-level, and what temporally proceeds it in daily life, remains underdeveloped. The current study tested whether three aspects of impaired control, namely restraint difficulties, drinking more than planned, and drinking longer than planned, had shared versus unique variability within- and between-individuals, and if pre-drinking positive and negative affect predicted such variability.

College students (N = 256) completed 14-days of ecological momentary assessment. Morning surveys assessed prior-day drinking, and random surveys assessed positive/negative affect, drinking behavior, and impaired control. Multilevel models tested the structure of day-level impaired control items within- and between-individuals and their pre-drinking affective antecedents.

At the within-person level, day-level restraint difficulties, drinking more than planned, and drinking longer than planned loaded well onto a latent factor, whereas between-person drinking more than planned loaded onto a latent factor highly but restraint difficulties and drinking longer than planned did not. Pre-drinking affect did not predict latent factors at either level. However, when specifying items as correlated outcomes, deviations in pre-drinking positive and negative affect predicted drinking more than planned at the within-person level and person-aggregated pre-drinking negative affect predicted restraint difficulties at the between-person level. Findings did not differ as a function of hazardous drinking.

Findings demonstrate complexities of modeling impaired control items within- and between-individuals and suggest that pre-drinking affect was related to drinking more than planned and restraint difficulties, albeit in different ways.