Measuring Alcohol Expectancies in Youth

• NCJ Number: 216650
• Journal: Journal of Youth and Adolescence Volume: 35 Issue: 6 Dated: December 2006 Pages: 939-948
• Author(s): Karen A. Randolph; Mary A. Gerend; Brenda A. Miller
• Date Published: December 2006
• Length: 10 pages
• Grant Number(s): R01 AA007554-11S1
• Sponsoring Agency: Florida State University; US Dept of Health and Human Services
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This article presents findings from a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) of a shortened version of the Alcohol Expectancies Questionnaire-Adolescent form (AEQ-A), which was conducted to determine whether a 2-factor, positive and negative expectancy structure held for a sample of 310 youth, (ages 10-16); measurement invariance was tested across gender.

Abstract

The findings support evidence of a two-factor, positive and negative structure for the abbreviated version of the AEQ-A, and show that it assesses equivalent alcohol expectancy (beliefs about the consequences of using alcohol) constructs among males and females. This finding suggests that the positive and negative two-factor structure of the AEQ-A measures the same constructs for boys and girls in this sample. The analysis of the relationship between expectancies and drinking found similar patterns for boys and girls, in that positive expectancies were related to alcohol consumption, but negative expectancies were not. This relationship was stronger for boys than for girls. Although these findings suggest that prevention efforts should focus on decreasing positive expectancies for alcohol consumption, especially for boys. More research is needed to confirm the validity of the AEQ-A's items, especially for negative expectancies, and to explain the high positive correlation between the positive and negative latent factors. The study involved 130 boys and 180 girls. Private, in-person interviews were conducted with the youth between 1998 and 2001 by trained interviewers. The AEQ-A was one of the first tools to measure positive and negative alcohol expectancies. This is a 90-item scale that measures adolescent beliefs about the consequences of alcohol use. A measure of alcohol use was included in order to assess links between the positive and negative expectancy factors and alcohol use. 3 tables, 1 figure, and 33 references