@article{ref1,
title="Pre-college pregaming: practices, risk factors, and relationship to other indices of problematic drinking during the transition from high school to college",
journal="Psychology of addictive behaviors",
year="2012",
author="Haas, Amie L. and Smith, Shelby K. and Kagan, Kari and Jacob, Theodore",
volume="26",
number="4",
pages="931-938",
abstract="This study examined alcohol use and pregaming (i.e., drinking before going out) in the transition from high school to college and had 3 objectives: (1) evaluating pregaming prevalence and characteristics during this time, (2) determining whether it represents a unique risk for problematic drinking above-and-beyond traditional measures of consumption (i.e., quantity/frequency: QFI, and heavy episodic drinking: HED), and (3) identifying characteristics of individuals who pregame. Alcohol use and beliefs (i.e., self-reported quantity/frequency, pregaming practices, drinking game participation, alcohol-related problems, and expectancies) were assessed in entering freshmen (N = 1171) with prior alcohol use for the 3 months between high school and starting college. Results revealed that 65% of drinkers pregamed in the past, and most did so on fewer than 50% of their overall drinking occasions, consuming an average of 3 drinks in 27 min and most (87%) drank afterward. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that pregaming frequency explained an additional 7.0% of variance in problematic alcohol use above-and-beyond overall drinking and demographic risk factors (e.g., gender, ethnicity, and Greek affiliation: R2 = .43 for overall model). Separate analyses indicated that demographics did not moderate the relationship between pregaming and problems. Regression analyses predicting pregaming frequency identified 7 characteristics associated with this outcome including demographics (gender, ethnicity, Greek affiliation), heavy drinking, drinking game frequency, and 2 scales of the Alcohol Expectancy Inventory (AEI: Attractive and Woozy). Findings implicate pregaming as a common practice during the transition to college, and highlight the need for additional studies examining pregaming changes across the freshman year. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0893-164X",
doi="10.1037/a0029765",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0029765"
}