Understanding sport-related drinking motives in college athletes: Psychometric analyses of the Athlete Drinking Scale

Researchers have identified college student–athletes as a high-risk group for heavy alcohol consumption (e.g., Nelson, T. F., & Wechsler, H. (2001). Alcohol and college athletes. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 33, 43–47). Recently, Martens and colleagues (Martens, M. P., Watson, J. C., Royland, E. M., & Beck, N. C. (2005). Development of the Athlete Drinking Scale. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 19, 158–164) developed a measure of sport-related motivations for drinking: the Athlete Drinking Scale (ADS). Initial research on the reliability and validity of the measure was promising, and the purpose of this study was to conduct additional psychometric analyses on the scale. Data were analyzed from 483 NCAA Division I athletes who volunteered to participate in the study. Results of a confirmatory factor analysis provided satisfactory support for the hypothesized factor structure of the ADS. Correlation and regression analyses indicated that scores on the ADS were associated with relevant alcohol-related outcome variables, even after controlling for the effects of demographic factors and general drinking motives. Thus, the ADS may be a useful tool for both clinicians and researchers working in alcohol prevention among collegiate athletes.