Alcohol-impaired driving behavior and sensation-seeking disposition in a college population receiving routine care at campus health services centers

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Abstract

Accidents stemming from alcohol-impaired driving are the leading cause of injury and death among college students. Research has implicated certain driver personality characteristics in the majority of these motor vehicle crashes. Sensation seeking in particular has been linked to risky driving, alcohol consumption, and driving while intoxicated. This study investigated the effect of sensation seeking on self-reported alcohol-impaired driving behavior in a college student population while adjusting for demographics, residence and drinking locations. A total of 1587 college students over the age of 18 completed a health screening survey while presenting for routine, non-urgent care at campus heath services centers. Student demographics, living situation, most common drinking location, heavy episodic drinking, sensation-seeking disposition and alcohol-impaired driving behavior were assessed. Using a full-form logistic regression model to isolate sensation seeking after adjusting for covariates, sensation seeking remains a statistically significant independent predictor of alcohol-impaired driving behavior (OR = 1.52; CI = 1.19–1.94; p < 0.001). Older, white, sensation-seeking college students who engage in heavy episodic drinking, live off-campus, and go to bars are at highest risk for alcohol-impaired driving behaviors. Interventions should target sensation seekers and environmental factors that mediate the link between sensation seeking and alcohol-impaired driving behaviors.

Introduction

The detrimental consequences of alcohol-impaired driving are the leading cause of injury and death among college students. In 2001, there were more than 1700 U.S. college alcohol-related injury deaths, of which 78% were alcohol-impaired traffic fatalities (Hingson et al., 2005). Research studies have consistently implicated drivers’ personality characteristics as factors associated with vehicular accidents and have called for a closer examination of the role personality plays in traffic safety (Lewin, 1982a, Lewin, 1982b, Schwebel et al., 2007). Personality characteristics such as aggressiveness, impaired risk perception, hostility, disinhibition, susceptibility to boredom, and sensation seeking are linked to negative driving outcomes (Burns and Wilde, 1995, Furnham and Saipe, 1993, Greene et al., 2000, Iversen and Rundmo, 2002, Jonah, 1997, McMillen et al., 1991, Wells-Parker et al., 2002).

Sensation-seeking disposition in particular, viewed as part of a global risk-taking behavior pattern (Jessor, 1987), has been implicated in risky driving (Dahlen et al., 2005, Patil et al., 2006, Iversen and Rundmo, 2002), alcohol drinking (Nagoshi et al., 1991, Yanovitzky, 2006, Hittner and Swickert, 2006, Trimpop and Kirkcaldy, 1997) and driving under the influence (DUI) of alcohol (Johnson and White, 1989, Jonah, 1997, Arnett, 1990). The sensation-seeking trait is defined by “the seeking of varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations and experiences, and the willingness to take physical, social, legal, and financial risks for the sake of such experience” (Zuckerman, 1994, p.27). Eight out of 13 studies in the general population and three studies of high school students that assessed the relationship between sensation seeking and drinking and driving found a positive association (see Jonah, 1997, for a review).

Information is relatively limited on the exact contribution of sensation seeking to alcohol-impaired driving among college students, who may differ in terms of predictors of risky driving (Fernandes et al., 2007). McMillen et al. (1992) studied 132 college students ages 18–24, enrolled in general psychology classes. Students who drank heavily and scored high on the sensation-seeking scale (Zuckerman, 1971) were more likely to be apprehended for driving while intoxicated. Another study by McMillen et al. (1991) assessed 188 college students age 18–21. Drivers from this sample apprehended for DUIs in a stakeout or roadblock had higher sensation-seeking scores than drivers who did not engage in drinking and driving. Jonah et al. (2001) studied 279 students who drove in the past 12 months. Participants who scored high on the sensation-seeking scale were more likely to engage in alcohol-impaired driving. Sensation seeking is reported to have a direct effect on DUI behavior among young males while controlling for drinking (Stacy et al., 1991).

A major limitation of some of the previous studies that assessed the relationship between sensation seeking and alcohol-impaired driving in college populations is their reliance on DUI citations as a measure of alcohol-impaired driving. Although DUI records are used to identify intoxicated drivers, this method does not include the drunk drivers who were not identified by law enforcement. In 2005, the Department of Justice reported arresting 1.4 million people for driving under the influence of alcohol (U.S. Department of Justice, 2005); however that is less than one percent of the 159 million self-reported episodes of alcohol-impaired driving among US adults each year (Quinlan et al., 2005). An additional limitation is the small sample size employed by many of the earlier studies.

The relative contribution of demographic variables (e.g. gender) and environmental factors (e.g. residence, living arrangements, drinking location) to the relationship between sensation seekers and alcohol-impaired driving among college students has not been fully explored. While some studies argue that the relationship between sensation seeking, drinking and driving is stronger for men than for women (Stacy et al., 1991, Johnson and White, 1989), other researchers do not find gender to play a differential role in the link between driving under the influence and sensation seeking (Fernandes et al., 2007, Schwebel et al., 2007). Situational factors (e.g. rural residence, geographical location, family living structure) are reported to affect alcohol-involved driving and riding (O’Malley and Johnston, 1999, Poulin et al., 2006), but little is known about how environmental variables (e.g. living arrangement, residence and drinking location) affect sensation seeking and alcohol-impaired driving among college students. Clearly, more research is needed to define the link through which sensation-seeking impacts alcohol-impaired driving.

Furthermore, being a drunk driver is not the only way to be injured in an alcohol-related motor vehicle accident. Riding with an alcohol-impaired driver is recognized as a high-risk driving behavior (Poulin et al., 2006, Dellinger et al., 1999). The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration defines a motor vehicle crash to be alcohol related if at least one driver, passenger, or non-occupant (pedestrian or cyclist) involved in the crash is found to have had a positive blood alcohol concentration (BAC) value (U.S. Department of Transportation, 2002). Eighty percent of passengers in alcohol-related traffic fatalities have BACs greater than zero (Isaac et al., 1995). Pairs of drivers and passengers admitted to a trauma center after a motor vehicle crash have been found to be alcohol-impaired at similar rates, with 43% drivers and 41% passengers having positive BACs (Soderstrom et al., 1996). Dellinger et al. (1999) argues that asking passengers about riding with an alcohol-impaired driver may be an alternative way to measure impaired driving, because the respondents may be more forthcoming about this behavior which is not against the law. Therefore, it may be important to evaluate sensation seeking in relation to students’ driving behavior either as drivers or as passengers.

The purpose of this paper is to fill the gap in the literature on the effect of sensation seeking on alcohol-impaired driving behavior in college students using data from the College Health Intervention Projects (CHIPs), a randomized controlled trial of brief physician alcohol intervention delivered at campus health services centers. The objective of this cross-sectional research is to examine the significance of sensation-seeking dispositions with respect to alcohol-impaired driving behavior (i.e. drunk driver or passenger of drunk driver) with and without adjusting for alcohol use and various subject characteristics in a college student population. Our findings will serve injury prevention efforts by offering a better understanding of the role alcohol and sensation seeking play in alcohol-impaired driving and will inform alcohol safety programs aimed at reducing deaths and injuries from vehicle crashes among college students.

Section snippets

Study sample

The data analyzed in this paper come from screening participants of the College Health Intervention Projects (CHIPs), a randomized control trial (RCT) to test the efficacy of brief intervention on reducing alcohol use and alcohol related harm among college students. Students provided data at one of three participating university sites: (1) a medium-size university in the US Midwest (12,000 students enrolled), (2) a large university in the US Midwest (40,000 students enrolled), (3) a large

Statistical analysis

Health Screening Surveys were checked for completeness and scanned at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Scanning Lab. The scanned data were imported into an Oracle database and checked for data incongruencies. Data analysis consisted of three steps: (a) examination of demographic, sensation seeking, alcohol, environmental, and alcohol-impaired driving variables by way of frequencies (%) and mean values; (b) correlations between individual difference variables and the outcome measure; and (c)

Results

The sample was composed of 1587 currently enrolled US college students coming into the student health center of the participating universities for routine care during the study period and who provided responses to alcohol-impaired behavior outcomes and sensation-seeking measures on the HSS-B. The HSS-B, an extended screening instrument, also contained questions on tobacco use, exercise, weight concerns, alcohol use, socio-demographic information, accidents and injuries, health care utilization,

Discussion

This study's objective was to examine the link between sensation seeking and self-reported alcohol-impaired driving behavior (i.e. drinking and driving or riding with a drunk driver) in a college student population. Our full-form logistic regression model allowed us to isolate the sensation-seeking association after adjusting for a range of covariates (age, gender, race, level of study, university site, alcohol consumption, residence, living arrangement, drinking location). College students of

Implications for prevention

Our results purport that injury prevention efforts may have to focus on sensation-seeking students on college campuses. Safe rides services between frequented bars and off-campus housing where students reside should be considered and promoted as an alternative to alcohol-impaired driving.

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by NIH/NIAAA grant no. 1R01 AA014685-01. We thank anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments which enhanced the quality of this paper.

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