Using a Web-based, self-administered questionnaire, we assessed 498 university-student drinkers' self-efficacy to use 31 different behavioral strategies to reduce excessive drinking in each of three different locations (bar, party, own dorm/apartment).
Averaging all 31 items within each drinking situation to create a single scale score revealed high internal consistency reliabilities and moderate inter-item correlations.
Testing the association of self-efficacy with drinking location, sex, and frequency of recent binge drinking, we found that respondents reported higher self-efficacy to use these strategies when drinking in their own dorm/apartment than when drinking in bars and at parties; women reported higher mean self-efficacy than men; and drinkers who engaged in 3-or-more binges in the previous 2 weeks reported lower self-efficacy than those who reported either 0 or 1-or-2 binges in the same time period.
This questionnaire could be used to identify self-efficacy deficits among clients with drinking problems and as an outcome measure to assess the degree to which interventions influence reported confidence to use specific drinking-reduction strategies in high-risk drinking situations.
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