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Binge drinking before and after a COVID-19 campus closure among first-year college students

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2021.106879Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Beyond disease transmission, COVID-19 is impacting other health behaviors.

  • Students at college campuses typically have high rates of binge drinking (BD).

  • Students reported on their BD frequency pre- and post-campus shutdown due to COVID-19.

  • Post-shutdown, most students reported no change in BD frequency.

  • Many students reported less BD post-shutdown; few reported more BD.

Abstract

Purpose

The COVID-19 pandemic is associated with reports of increased substance use. College students are a population of concern for high risk binge drinking and their behavior may be particularly impacted by COVID-19 campus closures. Therefore, we examine first-year college students’ binge drinking soon after their university’s pandemic-related suspension of in-person operations.

Methods

Students from a single campus (N = 741; age: M = 18.05, SD = 0.22) completed one assessment in April-May 2020 post-campus closure (March 2020) including theoretically-informed measures (e.g., drinking motives, norms) and two items of self-reported pre- and post-closure binge drinking frequency, the focus of these analyses.

Results

About half of students consistently reported not binge drinking pre- and post-closure; 6.75% reported a consistent frequency of binge drinking pre- and post-closure. Many (39.41%) reported lower 30-day binge drinking post-campus closure compared to their pre-closure reports; few (4.18%) reported higher 30-day binge drinking frequency post-campus closure. Students reporting lower binge drinking post-closure showed differences in coping, social, and enhancement drinking motives and isolation. Students reporting greater post-closure binge drinking reported higher perceived drinking norms and were more likely to be in Greek life.

Conclusion

This study demonstrates self-reported patterns in binge drinking among first-year college students at the point of COVID-19 campus closures. Pandemic-related college closures may have been a temporary environmental intervention on this high-risk behavior for some students. Although many students were not binge drinking, some continued binge drinking after closure and may benefit from preventive interventions.

Introduction

High-risk (i.e., binge) drinking among college students remains a public health concern given that about 35% report past two-week binge drinking, which is associated with deleterious consequences (Jennison, 2004, Kuntsche et al., 2017, Schulenberg et al., 2020). High-risk drinking in the first year of college often increases in early fall, decreases during exams, and increases over scheduled breaks (Borsari, Murphy, & Barnett, 2007), such as spring break. However, in March 2020 (i.e., spring break month), the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the spring semester at college campuses with policies involving stay-at-home orders, campus closures, and remote instruction. Many students relocated from college residences to their parents’ homes (Cohen, Hoyt, & Dull, 2020). In this context, the social and psychological impact of the pandemic during early campus closures could have influenced students’ drinking behavior.

Generally, U.S. studies are lacking pertaining to college students’ substance use at COVID-19 onset; however, a multi-campus student survey identified that the prevalence of past two-week binge drinking was lower soon after COVID-19 onset as compared to the prior fall semester (Martinez & Nguyen, 2020). A U.S. study of students with past 30-day drinking from a single campus found that, based on retrospective recall, alcohol use quantity was greater in the week before campus shutdown compared to the week after (Lechner et al., 2020). This sample’s psychological distress was positively associated with drinking during the recall period. Further, international and non-college data document COVID-19-related shifts in drinking behaviors (Chodkiewicz et al., 2020, Dumas et al., 2020, Gritsenko et al., 2020 May, Koopmann et al., 2020, Neill et al., 2020, Sun et al., 2020); although long-term data on students’ alcohol consumption patterns over the course of the pandemic (including closures, re-openings, semester breaks) is also needed.

For young adults, several psychosocial variables have well-documented associations with alcohol consumption (Krieger et al., 2018, Kuntsche et al., 2005), including peer norms and drinking motives which have not yet been examined in relation to college drinking and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. With regard to peer norms, perceptions that others in a student’s campus network are drinking excessively are associated with greater personal consumption (Borsari & Carey, 2001). However, COVID-19 resulted in students leaving campuses, surrounding communities closing bars and restaurants, and/or stay-at-home orders and gathering restrictions potentially altering student parties. Thus, it is unclear how perceptions of other students’ drinking at the onset of a pandemic relate to post-campus closure binge drinking.

With regard to motives, coping motives (i.e., drinking to regulate negative affect) are often associated with problematic drinking whereas motives regarding positive affect (e.g., enhancement, social motives) are typically related to moderate-to-high drinking levels (Kuntsche et al., 2005). In relation to COVID-19, an early report identified that about 25% of young adults initiated or increased substance use to cope with the pandemic’s stressful emotional toll (Czeisler, Lane, Petrosky, Wiley, Christensen, Njai, Weaver, Robbins, Facer-Childs, Barger, Czeisler, Howard, & Rajaratnam, 2020). Similarly, a cannabis-focused study of young adults found a positive relationship between coping motives for cannabis use and greater cannabis consumption early in pandemic (Bartel, Sherry, & Stewart, 2020). In addition, among adults, COVID-related psychological distress has been positively associated with several drinking indices (Rodriguez, Litt, & Stewart, 2020).

Taken together, studies suggest pandemic-related changes in alcohol consumption, with data varying across samples. Data on binge drinking at the time of COVID-19-related campus closures among U.S. college students are needed to understand the epidemiology of risky drinking at this critical juncture and to inform services provided to students. Further, such examinations should extend beyond prevalence rates to examine potential psychosocial correlates related to drinking at the onset of the pandemic. To this end, using data from a single campus, we examined self-reported binge drinking among first-year students (30 days pre- and post-COVID-19 campus closure), and differences in demographic, psychosocial (drinking motives, norms), and COVID-19-related variables among students.

Section snippets

Procedures

Study procedures were approved by an Institutional Review Board. In August 2019, incoming first-year students (N = 1500) at a Midwestern university were invited to participate in a trial of adaptive prevention interventions for alcohol use. Fifty-nine percent (N = 891) enrolled and were randomized to intervention conditions [see detailed protocol (Patrick et al., 2020)] which concluded in December 2019 (prior to the collection of data used in the current paper). Data for the present analyses

Measures

Alcohol-related variables. Past 30-day drinking was measured relative to spring break (i.e., pre-/post-closure). For our main independent variable, we assessed sex-specific binge drinking frequency pre- and post-campus closure with two separate items. The pre-closure item asked, “During the month prior to spring break, how often did you have 4/5 [tailored for: females/males] or more drinks containing any kind of alcohol within a two-hour period?” The post-closure item was parallel and read:

Analyses

In order to assess differences in self-reported ordinal binge drinking frequency between items assessing pre- and post-closure binge drinking we examined the equality of matched pairs (non-parametric paired t-test) using the Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-rank test (Wilcoxon, 1945). We created four mutually exclusive groups based on students’ responses about their pre- and post-closure binge drinking frequency: two groups that reported differing frequencies (fewer or greater number of times) and

Results

Descriptively, the means for binge drinking frequency among drinkers pre- and post-COVID-19 campus closure were: Mpre = 1.54 (SD = 1.38); Mpost = 0.72 (SD = 1.10). About half of students (56.41%) reported a consistent level of binge drinking on both pre- and post-closure binge drinking items, such that 49.66% consistently reported no binge drinking (Consistent No BD; included non-drinkers and drinkers) and 6.75% reported the same level of binge drinking on both survey items (i.e., once = 38%,

Discussion

At the beginning of a COVID-19-related campus closure, about half of first-year students surveyed remained consistent non-binge drinkers (i.e., did not drink or drank at a level below the binge threshold). Similar to a multi-campus survey of U.S. college students (Martinez & Nguyen, 2020), we found that many students (~40% of the sample) reported lower binge drinking early after the campus closure due to COVID-19, compared to before their campus closed. In another single-campus study of recent

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Erin E. Bonar: Conceptualization, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, Investigation. Michael J. Parks: Formal analysis, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, Conceptualization. Meredith Gunlicks-Stoessel: Writing - review & editing, Conceptualization. Grace R. Lyden: Writing - review & editing, Conceptualization, Formal analysis. Christopher J. Mehus: Writing - review & editing, Conceptualization. Nicole Morrell: Writing - review & editing, Project

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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