Identifying Sociodemographic Community Variables and High School Characteristics Predictive of Subsequent Collegiate Alcohol Consumption: An Exploratory Study

Objective. To assess associations of student academic characteristics, communities-of-origin and high schools attended with pre-enrollment and collegiate alcohol consumption using university, census, and public school data.Participants. 2,740 first-time, freshman college students at a large, public, Midwestern university (54% female).Measures. Self-reported drinking in the months prior to matriculation and in the first four semesters were merged with registrar records of ACT scores, high school core GPA, and first-generation college student status and census tract information associated with the community they lived in during their senior year of high school. For 79% of the participants, published public high school institutional characteristics were available from state administrative records. Results: Factor analyses of the census tract data and high school characteristics data yielded community factors of Socioeconomic Disadvantage-Advantage and Rural/White - Urban/Black, and School Factors of Predominantly White Not Poor student composition, School Discipline Problems, and Human Capital Investment. Entering academic aptitude and achievement was most strongly associated with alcohol use, especially for men. Smaller effects were found for the census variables, but these were confined to precollege assessments and men. Smaller protective effects in the sophomore year were also found for students who attended schools with a higher proportion of White students. Conclusions: Although entering intra-individual, student characteristics appear most associated with collegiate substance use, examination of unique additional effects for census and high school administrative records highlights the fact that such additional sources of data holds potential for improving prediction of substance use risk.