Habilitationsschrift, Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, 2019

This work deals with three basic assumptions in contemporary drinking motive research. The first is that the four-dimensional model of drinking motives and links between the motive dimensions and alcohol use hold true among adolescents from different countries. The results of three empirical studies revealed striking cross-countries consistencies. This concerned not only the confirmation of the four-dimensional factor structure in the countries separately, but also its equivalence across countries in terms of item loadings on the four factors and factor variances and inter-correlations. The rank order in the mean scores of the four motives was also invariant across countries: Adolescents scored highest on social motives followed by enhancement, coping, and conformity motives, in said order. Moreover, evidence reveals that adolescents from countries in northern Europe differ in their drinking motivations from their counterparts in southern/central European countries and that the link between drinking culture (northern vs. southern/central Europe) and alcohol use was mediated by drinking motives.
The second assumption states that drinking motives can be used to better target intervention approaches due to the proximity of drinking motives to alcohol-related outcomes. The results of three studies provide evidence that drinking motives constitute a final pathway to drinking patterns, i.e. the impact of more distal aspects such as alcohol expectancies, personality factors and parental drinking habits is mediated through drinking motives. This makes drinking motives particularly promising candidates to be considered in intervention approaches which we tested in two subsequent studies. In the first, we investigated whether reflecting on drinking motives in the context of a group activity following hospital discharge has an impact on participants’ drinking behavior at follow up. The results indicate that among adolescents admitted to hospital due to an acute alcohol intoxication the increase in heavy episodic drinking, which usually occurs from mid to late adolescence, was prevented when participating in both a MI-based intervention and in a group activity in which drinking motives and responsible drinking was discussed. Unfortunately, in this study it remains unclear to what degree the demonstrated preventive effect can be attributed to drinking motives and according changes towards intentions to drink more responsibly in the future rather than to other elements of the group activity. In a second study, we used drinking motives to improve targeting the content of the intervention to the needs and problems of riskily drinking adolescents. The results showed that girls who received the intervention in a motive-tailored way indicated less frequent drinking and a lower binge drinking frequency at follow-up than girls who received the similar psychosocial intervention but not motive-tailored. Unfortunately, similar differences were not found among boys, i.e. their alcohol consumption reduction at follow-up was independent of whether they received intervention in a motive-tailored way or not. It appears interventions that take account of adolescents' needs and problems, as expressed by their drinking motives, are more effective to reduce girls' frequent and risky drinking.
The third assumption deals with the question to what degree considerations of the Motivational Model of Alcohol Use can be transferred to other domains of human functioning. In a first study, we used these considerations to develop the Internet Motive Questionnaire for Adolescents (IMQ-A). We obtained empirical evidence indicating that the IMQ-A is a valid and reliable instrument to measure motives for Internet use in adolescent populations that may also help identify dysfunctional Internet users for which intervention approaches are warranted. In a second study, we used the considerations of the Motivational Model to develop the Motives for Listening to Music Questionnaire (MLMQ). The results confirmed the MLMQ’s four-dimensional factor structure and the hypothesized associations between coping motives and health-related outcomes, between social motives and peer-related activities and between conformity motives and being depressed and a victim of bullying. In a third study, we confirmed that music motives remain significant predictors of health-related outcomes among alcohol using adolescents when drinking motives were taken into account. Apparently, music serves important functions in the lives of young people, even for those who consume alcohol for different motives. In a fourth study, we developed the Amphetamine-type stimulant Motive Questionnaire (AMQ) the same way as the IMQ-A and the MLMQ, in a fourth study. The reported results clearly indicate that the considerations of the Motivational Model can also be successfully transferred to the use of illegal substances such as amphetamine-type stimulants and applied in a clinical population such as amphetamine-type stimulant addicted patients.
Taken together, the 12 empirical studies included here clearly demonstrate that drinking motives (a) are cross-culturally valid, (b1) serve as proximal predictors of alcohol use, i.e. the gateway through which more distal factors such as alcohol expectancies, personality factors and parental drinking habits are mediated, (b2) are useful in intervention approaches to reduce adolescent risky drinking and (c) can be transferred to other domains of human functioning such as using the Internet, listening to music and using amphetamine-type stimulants.