A cross-cultural investigation of college student alcohol consumption: a classification tree analysis

In this cross-cultural study, the authors attempted to identify high-risk subgroups for alcohol consumption among college students. American and Greek students (N = 132) answered questions about alcohol consumption, religious beliefs, attitudes toward drinking, advertisement influences, parental monitoring, and drinking consequences. Heavy drinkers in the American group were younger and less religious than were infrequent drinkers. In the Greek group, heavy drinkers tended to deny the negative results of drinking alcohol and use a permissive attitude to justify it, whereas infrequent drinkers were more likely to be monitored by their parents. These results suggest that parental monitoring and an emphasis on informing students about the negative effects of alcohol on their health and social and academic lives may be effective methods of reducing alcohol consumption. Classification tree analysis revealed that student attitudes toward drinking were important in the classification of American and Greek drinkers, indicating that this is a powerful predictor of alcohol consumption regardless of ethnic background.