Examination of the short form of the Inventory of Drinking Situations (IDS-42) in a young adult university student sample

The 42-item version of the Inventory of Drinking Situations (IDS-42) assesses relative frequency of drinking behavior across eight categories of drinking situations and was originally developed as a method for identifying high-risk situations in alcoholic samples. This study was designed to examine the psychometric properties of the IDS-42 in a sample of university students in order to assess its suitability as an assessment tool in the non-clinical population. Three hundred and ninety-six students (111 M, 283 F, 2 with missing gender data) completed the IDS-42 and a well established measure of drinking motives, the Drinking Motives Questionnaire (DMQ). Confirmatory factor analysis of the IDS-42 established a hierarchical factor structure with eight lower-order factors and three higher-order factors of negatively-reinforcing situations, positively-reinforcing situations, and temptation situations. The eight lower-order IDS-42 factors demonstrated moderate to high internal consistency and excellent concurrent validity with conceptually-similar DMQ subscale scores. Non-parametric analyses revealed that male students reported a higher drinking frequency overall as compared to female students, particularly in IDS-42 situations involving Social Pressure to Drink, Pleasant Times with Others, Testing Personal Control, and Urges and Temptations. Across the entire sample of university student drinkers, a higher drinking frequency was reported in positively-reinforcing situations as compared to negatively-reinforcing situations and temptation situations, as predicted. Results suggest the IDS-42 possesses good psychometric properties and support its utility as a tool in identifying situation-specific antecedents to drinking among university students.