Dyadic Associations Between Self and Peer Engagement in Online Alcohol-Facilitative Communication and College Student Drinking

Abstract

In a sample of 562 college student peer dyads ( M age = 20.47, SD = 1.26; 65.7% female; 68.8% White), this study investigates how college student engagement (both their own and their peer’s) in online alcohol-facilitative communication is associated with frequency of past year drinking. Data were drawn from a study conducted in 2016–2018 in the Southeastern United States. Actor-partner interdependence models suggest that college students who engaged in more alcohol-facilitative communication, and whose peer engaged in more alcohol-facilitative communication, drank more frequently and more heavily than those students who engaged in less alcohol-facilitative communication (even when controlling for their peer's offline drinking). Moreover, college student engagement in online alcohol-facilitative communication was a stronger predictor of their own drinking than their peer's engagement. The hypothesized interaction between self- and peer-reported alcohol-facilitative communication did not emerge overall, though exploratory analyses of specific subdimensions of alcohol-facilitative communication suggested a potential ceiling effect.