Binge Drinking Among University Students

A sample of 70 first-year students (18–19 years old) from the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain) participated in this study, which forms part of a broader research project on binge drinking among university students and has been approved by the Bioethics Committee of the University. Initially, 1,328 volunteers participating in the epidemiological phase of the research completed a classroom-administered questionnaire composed of the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) (Saunders et al., 1993 (link)), with additional questions regarding consumption of alcohol and other substances (illegal drugs and medications) and also sociodemographic information for epidemiological purposes (such as type of household or parents’ level of education).
The students were screened on the basis of their responses to the questionnaire, and 200 of the respondents, who fulfilled the initial selection criteria, and who also provided contact information, were interviewed. These students signed informed consent and received compensation (10 euros) for their participation. The semi-structured interview included the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview, Spanish version 5.0.0 (Ferrando et al., 2000 ), and the Symptom Checklist-90-R (SCL-90-R) (Derogatis, 1983 ) for assessing history or current psychopathological symptomatology. It also included a detailed questionnaire about substances use, based on the Cannabis Abuse Screening Test (CAST) (Cuenca-Royo et al., 2012 (link)), the Nicotine Dependence Syndrome Scale, short version (NDSS-S) (Shiffman et al., 2004 (link)) and a diary of alcohol consumption based on the revised version of the Alcohol Use Questionnaire proposed by Townshed and Ducka (Townshend and Duka, 2002 (link)).
Selection for neurocognitive assessment was based primarily on the drinking pattern. Subjects with an alcohol consumption of six or more drinks per episode at least once a month (AUDIT item 3) and a drinking rate of at least three drinks per hour in these episodes were selected as binge drinkers; this criterion was defined to approximate the level of consumption to the NIAAA definition of binge drinking (National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 2016 ). Subjects were included in the control group if they never partook in 6-drink episodes and never drank more than two drinks per hour. Inclusion and exclusion criteria, applied on the basis of information obtained in the interview, are summarised in Table 1.
Seventy-four subjects (100% Caucasian) who fulfilled these criteria consented to take part in the neurocognitive assessment. These participants received 20 euros for their collaboration. Four of the participants were later excluded because of the low quality of the EEG recording. Of the final 70 subjects, 32 (17 females) were included in the binge-drinking (BD) group and 38 (18 females) in the control (CN) group. Demographics and substance use characteristics are summarised in Table 2.