Incorporating social anxiety into a model of college student problematic drinking

Problem drinking among college students as well as social anxiety are significant public health concerns with highly negative individual and societal consequences. Thus, the current study involved the development of a path analytic model of college student problem drinking including social anxiety. The study included two samples: (1) 316 college students who had been referred to an alcohol intervention due to a campus alcohol violation; and (2) 228 college students recruited from the Psychology Subject Pool who had never been referred to the alcohol intervention. Results generally supported the hypothesis that perceived drinking norms mediated the relations among social anxiety and the alcohol outcome variables (weekly alcohol consumption and alcohol-related problems). However, results generally did not support the hypotheses regarding the mediating or moderating function of the rating of the desirability of expected effects, and provided little support for the mediating function of alcohol expectancies in the relations among social anxiety and alcohol outcome variables. Therefore, it seems that the influence of peers may be more important for socially anxious college students than alcohol expectancies and valuations of alcohol\u27s effects. Future research was recommended to further clarify these relationships. Implications of these results for the development of prevention and intervention programs for college students were discussed