Using ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to explore the associations between boredom and alcohol use in at-risk college student drinkers

Abstract

Although affective models of alcohol use suggest that people drink as a way of regulating their emotions, previous research on global negative affect (NA) and positive affect (PA) has resulted in findings that vary across the within-person and between-persons levels of analysis. Global NA in particular has failed to be a consistent predictor of drinking behavior in young adults, leading to more recent research showing that discrete forms of NA (i.e., anxiety, anger, sadness) differentially predict the likelihood and quantity of subsequent same-day or next moment alcohol use. Boredom is one type of discrete NA that has not been extensively researched in relation to alcohol use at the within-persons level. Current theoretical models of boredom conceptualize it as an aversive affective state that occurs in response to a lack of perceived meaningfulness in a given situation, lack of attentional engagement due poor fit between available cognitive resources and cognitive demands in a given situation, or a combination of both kinds of deficits. As such, boredom has two underlying theoretical causes which are believed to operate independently. It also has a variety of theoretical and empirically supported outcomes, ranging from doing nothing and tolerating it, to seeking out more engaging and/or meaningful activities, to employing a variety of maladaptive behaviors – including substance use – as a means of coping. Past cross-sectional research has demonstrated a positive association between trait boredom (boredom proneness) and alcohol use in young people; however, these studies have not controlled for global NA or PA, have used measures of boredom proneness that are psychometrically questionable, and have not investigated within-person associations between state boredom and subsequent drinking behaviors on a short time scale. This secondary analysis of data from a larger Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) study was based on momentary assessment data from 160 undergraduate college students who met criteria for at-risk drinking at baseline (based on AUDIT scores ≥ 8). For 14 days, participants were prompted via an application installed on their mobile phones to complete brief assessments four times each day at random intervals approximately 3.5 hours apart, with questions probing current affective states, perceived meaningfulness of the current situation, and alcohol use. Multilevel models were estimated to examine: 1) the within-person main effects of momentary boredom on next-moment likelihood of drinking and quantity of alcohol consumed; 2) between-persons main effects of person-average boredom on proportion of drinking moments and quantity of drinks consumed across the 14-day sampling period; and 3) within- and between persons interaction effects for sense of meaning predicting the relationship between boredom and alcohol use. Results indicate that at the within-person level, momentary boredom had a slight but significant inverse relationship with likelihood of drinking at the next moment and no effect of quantity of drinks consumed at the next moment. At the between-persons level, average boredom had no effect on proportion of drinking moments or on quantity of drinks consumed across the 14-day sampling period. Interaction effects were found only at the between-persons level, such that for participants who had a lower-than-average sense of meaning, there was a significant, positive association between average boredom and both proportion of drinking moments and quantity of drinks consumed over the sampling period. Findings suggest that chronic lack of meaning is a risk factor for drinking in response to boredom.