Affective drinking motives, delinquency and binge drinking: A comparison of male and female high school seniors

Abstract

Aim: The purpose of this study was to determine whether the association between affective drinking motives, delinquency and binge drinking varied as a function of sex and if so, whether delinquency moderated the relationship between affective drinking motives and binge drinking in late adolescent males and females. Methods: Participants were 623 (257 males, 366 females) high school seniors from the 2018 Monitoring the Future study. A principal components analysis was initially performed to create component scores for the first factor of a 15-item drinking motives scale subsequently labeled affective drinking motives. These scores, along with sex and a measure of delinquency, were then entered into a three-way interaction. The interaction was found to correlate significantly with binge drinking. Because of the significant three-way interaction, analyses were performed on male and female participants separately. Results: Analyses conducted on male participants revealed a moderate correlation between affective drinking motives and binge drinking but no evidence of an interaction between affective drinking motives and delinquency. Analyses performed on female participants, on the other hand, identified a significant main effect for affective drinking motives and a negative interaction between affective drinking motives and delinquency, indicating that the relationship between affective drinking motives and binge drinking was strongest when delinquency was low. Conclusions: These results suggest that while delinquency had no apparent impact on the affective drinking motive–binge drinking correlation in boys, low delinquency clearly amplified the counter-binge drinking effects of low affective drinking motives in girls.