Biomedical subjects

Robert G Laforge

Publications and source records attributed to Robert G Laforge.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Binge drinking and health behavior in medical students.

OBJECTIVES: The objective of this study was to assess the prevalence of binge drinking and its relation to other health behaviors, drinking-related attitudes and perceived social norms among German medical students. METHODS: 271 first-year German medical students completed a cross-sectional, self-administered survey. A total of 252 (62% female and 38% male) students provided useable surveys. The mean age was 20.6years (S.D.=1.7). RESULTS: Most students reported heavy drinking with 24% having one episode in the past 2 weeks (Infrequent Bingers) and 28% having two or more episodes (Frequent Bingers). Men were more likely than women to have had a binge drinking episode. Frequent binge drinkers saw more pros of drinking and reported a higher temptation to drink than students in the other groups. Additionally, they were more likely to smoke, use cannabis, not exercise and not eat fruits and vegetables. All students overestimated their peers' alcohol intake and binge drinking frequency. CONCLUSIONS: Binge drinking was highly prevalent in this sample and clearly related to other health risk behaviors. Drinking rates were similar to college students in other Western countries. Future research needs to assess the consequences of this multiple risk behavior among medical students regarding academic and professional performance as well as personal health.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Demographic differences in support for smoking policy interventions.

The Smoking Policy Inventory (SPI) is a 35-item scale, which measures attitudes towards tobacco control policies. The five dimensions of the SPI are advertising and promotion, public education, laws and penalties, taxes and fees, and restrictions on smoking. The SPI has been applied to different samples, both in the USA and internationally. However, no one has investigated if there is differential support for policy intervention among subgroups within the USA. This study investigated subgroup differences on five demographic variables (gender, age, race, ethnicity, and education) across the five dimensions of the SPI. A random digit dial sample of 506 adult participants from the United States was analyzed with five MANOVAs and follow-up ANOVAs. Men (N=188) had significantly (p<0.05) less favorable attitudes towards tobacco control policies than women (N=317) on all five scales. Blacks (N=52) had significantly (p<0.05) more favorable attitudes than whites (N=410) on increasing public education. There were no significant differences between Hispanics (N=21) and non-Hispanics (N=469). Older people were significantly (p<0.05) more supportive of restrictions on advertising and promotion, increasing public education, and increasing environmental restrictions. More educated people were significantly (p<0.05) more supportive of increasing taxes and fees and increasing environmental restrictions. These subgroup differences could be employed to guide the targeting of changes in policies and interventions to the specific concerns of the various groups.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2005

The utility of collateral informant assessment in college alcohol research: results from a longitudinal prevention trial.

OBJECTIVE: Collateral informants have been used to assess independently the validity of college student self-report data. However, it is unclear under what conditions collateral reports might be valid and useful in college research. We present two studies that examine aspects of these issues using data from 1,264 college student participants in a brief intervention prevention trial conducted at a public university. METHOD: The first study describes the characteristics and predictors of agreement on reports of alcohol use and problems from 219 student-collateral informant pairs. The second study investigates potential "pipeline effects"; that is, whether collateral verification resulted in changes in student self-reports on two subsequent survey assessments over 1 year using longitudinal data from 1,264 students. RESULTS: Little support was found for the assumption that nondependent college drinkers underreport drinking behaviors and consequences. Collaterals who reported more occasions of drinking together, higher confidence in the report and a close relationship with the participant provided reports that were more consistent with participant drinking reports. No evidence was found that pipeline effects of collateral verification improve the accuracy of college student self-reports at future assessments. CONCLUSIONS: The results from this study are consistent with much of the published literature showing that using collateral reports to verify the self-reports of college students (and adults) may result in increased, not decreased, misclassification error. These findings suggest that the time and expense required to collect collateral data in the college setting has limited utility and may be better spent on establishing the proper assessment conditions that will foster accurate and honest self-reporting.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

Approaches to brief intervention for hazardous drinking in young people.

This article represents the proceedings of a symposium at the 2002 joint conference of the Research Society on Alcoholism and the International Society for Biomedical Research on Alcoholism in San Francisco. The chair was John B. Saunders. The focus of the symposium was on brief intervention approaches for hazardous drinking among young people. The presentations were (1) Evidence for the effectiveness of brief intervention as an approach to reducing hazardous alcohol use, by John B. Saunders; (2) College student hazardous drinking in New Zealand, the USA, UK, and Australia: implications for research, policy, and intervention, by Kypros Kypri; (3) Applications of motivational feedback on the college campus, by Scott T. Walters; (4) A population based individualized alcohol harm reduction feedback intervention: preliminary results from the college-based alcohol risk reduction (CBARR) trial, by Robert G. Laforge; and (5) Brief interventions: conclusions and future directions, by Mary E. Larimer.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2003

Rethinking positive and negative aspects of alcohol use: suggestions from a comparison of alcohol expectancies and decisional balance.

OBJECTIVE: Few studies have compared similar alcohol-related constructs such as alcohol expectancies and decisional balance: two conceptualizations of the positive and negative aspects of alcohol. The purpose of this study was to compare these constructs and to examine their ability to predict alcohol use and problems. METHOD: A sample of 406 college students recruited from Psychology courses at a mid-sized Northeastern University completed a questionnaire that included measures of alcohol expectancies, decisional balance, drinking indices and drinking problems. Of these students, N = 389 (73% female) were drinkers and were included in analyses. RESULTS: Positive expectancies (PE) and the pros were more related to one another than were negative expectancies (NE) and the cons. The 8-item pros scale outperformed 20 items measuring PE in the prediction of alcohol problems and performed equally well in the prediction of alcohol indices. The negative relationship of cons to alcohol indices, something not found with NE, suggested that the cons scale may include components important to the measurement of negative aspects of alcohol. CONCLUSIONS: Although expectancies, particularly PE, have been a common choice for use by researchers, these data suggest that decisional balance scales may be a better choice because their predictive ability is equal to or better than that of expectancies, and their response burden on participants is lower. Instruments that aim to measure the negative aspects of alcohol use should include severe and distal items to better capture this negative attitudinal domain.

Adult↗