Elsevier

Addictive Behaviors

Volume 32, Issue 11, November 2007, Pages 2611-2632
Addictive Behaviors

Psychometric evaluation of the five-factor Modified Drinking Motives Questionnaire — Revised in undergraduates,☆☆

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2007.07.004Get rights and content

Abstract

The psychometric properties of the Modified Drinking Motives Questionnaire — Revised (Modified DMQ-R) [Blackwell, E., & Conrod, P. J. (2003). A five-dimensional measure of drinking motives. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia], based on a five-factor model of drinking motives with separate coping-anxiety and coping-depression factors, were evaluated in undergraduates. In Study 1, confirmatory factor analyses supported the correlated five-factor model in two samples of undergraduate drinkers (N = 726 and N = 603). Furthermore, the five-factor model fit the data better than a four-factor model conceptually equivalent to that of Cooper [Cooper, M. L. (1994). Motivations for alcohol use among adolescents: Development and validation of a four-factor model. Psychological Assessment, 6, 117–128] (i.e., with coping-anxiety and coping-depression items constrained to a single factor). In Study 1, drinking motives were predictive of concurrent drinking frequency and typical number of alcoholic beverages per occasion, over and above demographics. In Study 2, the Modified DMQ-R scores showed good to excellent test–retest reliability in a sample of undergraduates who were relatively frequent drinkers (N = 169). Also, drinking motives prospectively predicted number of drinks consumed per week and alcohol-related problems, over and above demographics and initial alcohol use. Notably, coping-anxiety and coping-depression motives were distinctly related to alcohol consumption and alcohol problems.

Section snippets

Participants

Sample 1 participants were drawn from a pool of 868 Dalhousie University undergraduates in an introductory psychology course who completed the Modified DMQ-R in 2004 as part of a battery of questionnaires administered in a mass screening. Those indicating that they did not drink alcohol (n = 109), or who did drink, but did not provide complete data on the Modified DMQ-R (n = 33) were excluded from the analyses, leaving 726 (68.0% women) participants in Sample 1. The mean age was 19.30 years (SD = 

Participants

Study 2 participants (i.e., Sample 3) came from a pool of 177 students enrolled in undergraduate psychology courses at Dalhousie University who were participating in an internet-based daily diary study of the emotional antecedents of drinking behaviour, which was advertised as “An Examination of Daily Health and Daily Activities.” The participants were recruited from the 2005 paper-and-pencil screening described in Study 1 and from an online screening conducted in 2006–07 which was open to

Discussion

In the present investigation, we examined the psychometric properties of the Modified DMQ-R, which extends previous research (i.e., Cooper, 1994) by distinguishing between drinking to cope with anxiety and drinking to cope with depression. In Study 1, CFAs indicated that the hypothesized five-factor model of alcohol-use motives, with correlated factors representing social, coping-anxiety, coping-depression, enhancement, and conformity motives, provided a good fit to the Modified DMQ-R scores of

Acknowledgments

Valerie V. Grant has been funded by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Canada Graduate Scholarship Master's Award, a Nova Scotia Health Research Foundation Student Award, a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, and Killam Predoctoral Scholarships over the course of the completion of this research. Sherry H. Stewart is supported by an Investigator Award from CIHR and a Killam Research Professorship from the Faculty of Science at Dalhousie University. Roisin M. O'Connor is supported by a CIHR

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    This study was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) awarded to Sherry H. Stewart and by a dissertation grant award from the Society for a Science of Clinical Psychology awarded to Valerie V. Grant. This study was conducted as a component of a doctoral dissertation by Valerie V. Grant under the supervision of Sherry H. Stewart. The initial Modified Drinking Motives Questionnaire — Revised (Modified DMQ-R) work was supported by a start-up grant from the Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia awarded to Patricia J. Conrod.

    ☆☆

    Valerie V. Grant has been funded by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Canada Graduate Scholarship Master's Award, a Nova Scotia Health Research Foundation Student Award, an SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, and Killam Predoctoral Scholarships over the course of the completion of this research. Sherry H. Stewart is supported by an Investigator Award from CIHR and a Killam Research Professorship from the Faculty of Science at Dalhousie University. Roisin M. O'Connor is supported by a CIHR Post-Doctoral Fellowship. Ekin Blackwell was supported by a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Master's Trainee Award at the time of the initial Modified DMQ-R work.

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