Dr Rafaella Milani

University of West London (Lecturer Psychology and Substance Use and Misuse Studies)

Predictive relationships of drinking motives and weekly alcohol consumption in English and Italian young adults

Introduction: National differences in how and why people consume alcohol are important to understand drinking behaviour. Reasons for drinking alcohol (motives) play a decisive role in alcohol drinking patterns. For example, Cooper’s (1994) four factor model of drinking motives suggests that ‘drinking to enhance positive affect’ and ‘drinking to cope’ are related with heavier drinking. Findings on the ‘desire to conform’ dimension are less conclusive, with only few studies showing a positive correlation with heavy drinking. The aim of this study was to explore differences in motives for drinking in Italy and England and to investigate whether these factors may predict drinking behaviour in the two countries.

Method: The total amount of respondents consisted of n=307 young adults (n=218 Italians and n=89 English, aged 18-35). The Drinking Motives questionnaire (Cooper, 1994) was used to assess motives to drink, and the Alcohol Use Questionnaire (Mehrabian and Russell, 1978, adapted by Townshend & Duka, 2002) was employed to record approximate weekly alcohol use in units.

Results: Amongst the English respondents increased weekly alcohol intake was significantly associated with high scores on the ‘drinking to cope’ factor. The Italian sample showed a significant negative relationship between weekly alcohol intake and ‘drinking to conform’. Indicating the more they conform the less they drink.

Conclusions: This study identified national differences in the reasons why Italians and English drink. These motives seem to influence the amount of alcohol intake. The present findings should be taken into account when developing prevention strategies for young adults in Italy and England.

Co-Authors

n/a

Conflicts of interest:

None