Problem Drinking, Gambling and Eating Among Undergraduate University Students. What are the Links?

Problematic drinking, gambling and eating are elevated among undergraduate university students but our understanding of how they are linked is limited. In this study, drinking, gambling and eating were assessed across a number of dimensions: drinking and gambling involvement, associated negative consequences, impairment of control, and motives; and disordered eating concerns and behaviours, loss of control over eating, and eating expectancies (N = 301). Canonical correlation analysis revealed that drinking and gambling were linked through a factor of general problematic involvement (R = 0.43): students who drank more, experienced more negative consequences and stronger social and coping motives for drinking, also had greater gambling involvement, impaired control, negative consequences, and stronger motives for gambling. These results are broadly consistent with a general problem syndrome model of underlying vulnerabilities. Results showed that there was also a small relationship between the alcohol and the eating variables (R = 0.40), reflecting a negative relationship between problematic alcohol involvement and a dimension of eating attitudes and behaviors. These results are not fully consistent with a problem syndrome model and instead suggest eating and alcohol serve different purposes among students, and that there is not a unitary relationship between eating attitudes and behaviors and alcohol involvement and motives. Finally, we observed no link between eating and gambling variables, which suggests these behaviors, are distinct. Men reported more alcohol and gambling-related involvement and concerns and women more eating-related concerns but principal component analysis suggested that, despite different levels of involvement, associations among these variables were similar for both genders.