There are worse things and others to blame: measuring underage drinking disengagement strategies among college students

Objective To adapt an existing measure of underage drinking disengagement among adolescents for use with university students and establish convergent validity.Method University students who drank or used a substance in the past month (n = 893) from 12 U.S. universities (Mage=19.48, age range 18–25; White = 74.1%; Female = 68.1%) completed an online survey as part of a larger study assessing their attitudes toward underage drinking on campus (adapted measure of disengagement) and alcohol consumption (AUDIT-C).Results The EFA indicated that a 2-factor structure fit the data well. The factors were Cognitive Restructuring and Minimizing Agency, which was confirmed with a CFA (χ2(64)=250.11, p<.001; CFI=.93; TLI=.92; RMSEA=.08, 90% CI of RMSEA: .07 to .09; SRMR=.04). Cognitive Restructuring and Minimizing Agency were positively correlated with alcohol consumption, (r=.35, p<.001, and r =.21, p<.001, respectively).Conclusions Clinicians can benefit from using students’ responses on this measure to challenge beliefs that young adults hold about the acceptability of alcohol use while underage, as well as challenge beliefs about actions of authority figures and peers that decrease perceived responsibility for underage drinking among university students. Future research can examine under what conditions people disengage and its link to other problematic behaviors involving alcohol.