A new study examined the network of social connections between drinkers on their heaviest drinking occasions. The study aimed at 1) describing the network of members who are present in the drinking occasions of their peers, and 2) examining the relationship between participants’ position in the network of heavy drinking day ties and the total number of drinks consumed on their maximum drinking day. Participants (N = 972) were first-year university students that had consumed at least one drink of alcohol in the past month. Participants completed surveys, which included questions about demographics, social ties and connections within their networks, maximum number of drinks they consumed in the past month and who was present during the day that participants drank the most. The authors calculated correlations to examine the relationship between social network indices and alcohol use. The authors also used network autocorrelation models to examine whether the network indices were associated with participant’s maximum number of drinks. Results showed that participants consumed an average of 6.3 drinks on their heaviest drinking day in the past month, and 65.4% reported pregaming on that day. Furthermore, participants indicated that 3.1 of their nominated peers were present on the participant’s maximum drinking day, representing approximately 55.4% of their overall nominations on the sociocentric network questionnaire. Moreover, 81% of the peers who were present on the participant’s maximum drinking day reported alcohol use in the past month. The proportion of peers who were present who were also past month drinkers was significantly associated with the participants’ maximum number of drinks (p = 0.032). In addition, participants’ maximum number of drinks in the past month was significantly associated with their nominated peers’ maximum number of drinks in the past month (p < 0.001). Participants’ maximum number of drinks was also significantly and positively associated with maximum drinking day network indegree, i.e. the number of times an individual is nominated by other network members (p < 0.001), outdegree, i.e. the number of network members the individual nominates (p < 0.001), betweenness centrality, i.e. the number of times an individual falls on the shortest path between two other people in the network (p < 0.001), and ego density, i.e. the extent to which a person’s ties are also connected to each other (p = 0.04). Participants receiving financial aid had significantly lower maximum drinking day indegree than those not receiving financial aid (p < 0.01). Similarly, participants residing in substance-free dorms (p = 0.03) also had significantly lower maximum drinking day indegree.
Take away: This study found that the total number of times a participant was nominated as being present on another students’ heaviest drinking occasion and peers’ number of drinks on their own maximum drinking occasions were significantly associated with a participant’s maximum number of drinks.