Reasons given by college students for drinking: a discriminant analysis investigation

Based on self-reported levels of alcohol consumption, 473 college students (295 female and 178 male) were placed into at-risk or not-at-risk groups. Using reasons given for drinking as the independent variables, discriminant analysis procedures were conducted separately on the males and females to determine if a function could be found which would discriminate between the groups. For the female group, 11 of 22 reasons defined a discriminant function which accounted for 36% of the variance between the groups (p < .001). This function was also able to correctly classify 71% of the holdout sample. For the males, five of the 22 reasons defined a discriminant function which accounted for 36% of the variance between the groups (p < .001). This function was able to correctly classify 69% of the holdout sample.