Examining Graduate Student Drinking Patterns and Normative Misperceptions

Objective: Approximately 85% of graduate students drink alcohol and maintain high risk for problematic use. However, graduate student misperceptions about drinking patterns remain under-researched. Thus, the current study aimed to 1) describe patterns of graduate student drinking, and 2) examine discrepancies of descriptive and injunctive norms. Participants and methods: Participants (N = 330, 55% female, mean age = 26.1) were recruited using social media and completed a cross-sectional online survey assessing alcohol use patterns. Results: On average, graduate students consume 8.7 drinks per week. A series of one-sample t-tests demonstrated that female graduate students overestimated their peers’ drinks per week and underestimated how many days their peers drank per week. However, they accurately perceived typical drinks per occasion, and how many drinks per week their peers’ thought were acceptable. Male graduate students underestimated how many days their peers drank per week, but accurately perceived peers’ drinks per week, typical drinks per occasion, and how many drinks per week their peers’ thought were acceptable. Conclusions: Graduate students, especially women, have normative misperceptions about descriptive norms of their peers. Personalized normative feedback (PNF) interventions utilizing descriptive norms may be particularly effective for female graduate students who engage in heavy drinking patterns.