Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #105523

Jennifer Boyle, PhD, MS, Department of Health Science, State University of New York @ Brockport, 350 New Campus Drive, Brockport, NY 14420, 585-395-2764, jboyle@brockport.edu and Bradley Boekeloo, PhD, MS, Department of Public and Community Health, University of Maryland, College of Health and Human Performance, College Park, MD 20742.

There has been little investigation regarding parental influence on the drinking behaviors of college students while students are at school. A web-based survey was conducted with 265 first-year students living in residence halls at a mid-Atlantic university. It was hypothesized that: 1) students who report greater parental communication regarding the negative effects of alcohol are less likely to report problem drinking than students who report less communication, 2) the association between communication and problem drinking is mediated by constructs borrowed from the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), 3) the association between communication and problem drinking is mediated by constructs borrowed from the Health Belief Model (HBM), 4) the association between communication and problem drinking is mediated by constructs borrowed from both the TRA and HBM, 5) the association between communication and problem drinking is best explained by the model incorporating constructs from both the TRA and the HBM. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data. Students whose parents talked with them more about the negative effects of alcohol held more favorable attitudes toward alcohol (p = -0.13, p < 0.05). In turn, students holding more favorable attitudes toward alcohol experienced more drinking problems (p = 0.19, p < 0.05). The TRA model was determined to be the model that best explained the relationship between communication and problem drinking. Possible explanations for the unexpected findings will be discussed.

Learning Objectives:

• 1) Participants will be able to compare and contrast the ability of two health behavior theories to explain the relationship between parental communication and student drinking
• 2) Participants will be able to describe the effect of parental communication on student drinking
• 3) Participants will be able to list three explanations for study findings

Keywords: College Students, Alcohol

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.