Loneliness, alcohol and marijuana use among male college students

This study examined relationships among global loneliness, emotional loneliness, and social loneliness, as measured by the UCLA Loneliness Scale, and the degree/severity of alcohol or marijuana use related problems, as measured by the Rutgers Alcohol Problem Index (RAPI), among undergraduate male students who were referred to a university substance abuse prevention program and a random sample drawn from the general male student body. This study also investigated differences in global loneliness, emotional loneliness, social loneliness, and the degree/severity of alcohol or marijuana use related problem, between the referred male students and the random sample group, and between the alcohol and marijuana users in the experimental group. ^ A university substance abuse prevention program was utilized for the purposive sampling of research participants. That is, those undergraduate male students who were referred for alcohol or marijuana use related problems were recruited as research participants in this study. A randomly selected sample was also drawn from various university residential halls and served as the control group for this study. ^ Pearson-Product-Moment Correlations were used to explore the relationships between participants\u27 self-report global loneliness, emotional loneliness, and social loneliness, and the degree/severity of alcohol or marijuana use related problems. Discriminant functional analysis, t-test, and ANOVA were conducted to investigate the differences between the referred group and the random sample group, and between alcohol and marijuana users, with respect to dependent variables. ^ The study findings indicate that there was no significant relationship between the RAPI score and global loneliness, emotional loneliness, and social loneliness. Results show that there were significant differences between the referred group and the random sample group, in regard to the RAPI score, and emotional loneliness and social loneliness, as a whole. The referred group had a higher emotional loneliness and a lower social loneliness than the random sample group. Additional findings reveal that there were significant differences between alcohol and marijuana users in the referred group, in regard to the three variables of the RAPI score, the emotional loneliness, and the social loneliness, as a whole.