Previous research has shown that those who post alcohol-related content on social media also report higher alcohol use. They have also discovered that students may prefer to discuss alcohol involvement through private text messaging. The current study wanted to develop the “alcohol-talk” dictionary for use in the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count program.
The final sample size of this study was 267 students that were selected from a larger study that was looking at substance use data. In total there were 569,172 text messages sent or received over 14 day. At the first visit they assessed student alcohol use and related risks. They also asked students about perceptions of whether their peers drink or do drugs along with if they thought their friends and family approve of substance use. During the second visit they assessed daily alcohol use for the past 10 days. To assess alcohol-talk words in text messages they found daily alcohol-talk and daily word count to calculate the mean number of daily alcohol-talk words for each participant.
The results showed that 200 alcohol-talk words occurred during the 2-weeks at some point. They found that on average, there were 50 alcohol talk words a student exchanged over the 2-week period. Less than 1% of the total words sent in text messages were alcohol-talk words. Six students out of 267 never used an alcohol-talk word during the time period. Researchers did find that more frequent alcohol-talk was related to more frequent alcohol use. This study provides important information about the potential to predict within- and between-person risk for drinking behaviors.
Take Away: Previous research has found that posting alcohol-related content on social media may correlate to higher alcohol use and students may prefer to talk about alcohol involvement through text messages. The current study wanted to develop the “alcohol-talk” dictionary for use in the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count program. The final sample included 267 students with a total of 569,172 text messages sent or received. Results showed 200 alcohol talk words occurred and an average of 50 words were exchanged over the 2-week period for each student. Researchers did find that more frequent alcohol-talk was related to more frequent alcohol use. This study provides important information about the potential to predict within- and between-person risk for drinking behaviors.