Negative Marijuana-Related Consequences Among College Students in Five Countries

Marijuana-related consequences among college students are a public health concern in the United States, and there are many tools and emerging methods to assess such consequences. An example is the 21-item Brief-Marijuana Consequences Questionnaire (B-MACQ), which has been shown to be reliable in assessing negative marijuana-related consequences in U.S. college students. A recent study applied this questionnaire to students in the U.S., Argentina, Netherlands, Spain, and Uruguay to see if it was still a reliable predictor in different populations.

Each participant was a last-month marijuana user. They completed the B-MACQ and provided marijuana use behaviors and perceptions of marijuana use. The results indicated that Spanish students reported more marijuana-related negative consequences than U.S. and Argentinian students. The data analysis indicated that the B-MACQ exhibited configural and scalar invariance across sex and across the four countries (excluding the Netherlands) and therefore is reliable in accurately assessing marijuana-related negative consequences in college students, regardless of culture or sex.

Take Away: The B-MACQ can accurately assess negative marijuana-related consequences in college students.

Bravo, A.J., Pearson, M.R., Pilatti, A., Mezquita, L. (2019) Negative Marijuana-related Consequeces among Students in Five Countries: Measurement Invariance of Brief Marijuana Consequences Questionnaire. Addiction. doi.org/10.1111/add.14646.