Athletes Drinking Motives

Over 1,700 deaths a year are due to alcohol consumption among college students with another 600,000 assaults. Would you believe that intercollegiate athletes are more at risk to experience negative consequences compared to your average Joe? Results have proven that student-athletes in fact do. Matthew Martens and Jessica Martin explore the reasoning behind this, and the factors that might motivate an athlete to drink so heavily.
Research has shown that intercollegiate student athletes are more prone to suffering from consequences and regrets as a result to heavy drinking. With several different studies taken nation wide, results have revealed that college athletes consume more alcoholic drinks per week than non-student athletes. As a student athlete I can say for myself that there is absolutely no time to drink during the week between the practices, meetings, and classes I never have time to drink, and neither do my teammates. Because of this student athletes cram their partying in. This is called “binge” drinking where heavy amounts of alcohol are consumed in a very short period of time. Two national studies have proved that intercollegiate athletes are more suitable to experience costly actions. Consequences such as getting into trouble with the law, regretting something they have done, and engaging in sexual activity. In order for researchers to truly understand why athletes drink so much, they studied the factors of being an athlete and what motivate athletes to drink heavier than a non-student athlete. Martens developed the ADS (Athletes Drinking Scale), which is exclusively for athletes and their motives to drink. They figured that the baggage that came with being a student athlete would create different motives for them to drink, and the ADS was created to find them.
They discovered three factors that measured these motives. The first subscale was Positive reinforcement meaning that athletes feel that after a game they should go out their team because they have worked all week and now its time for them to celebrate. The second subscale is the team/group factor where wanting to fit in with your team or pressure from your teammates. And finally Sports-Related Coping where an athlete may feel that alcohol might help them cope with their performance or the stress and pressures that come with being a student-athlete. Although all of this research was promising, they went deeper, wanting to discover if motives for athletes were stronger during their competitive season or off-season. They figured that although intercollegiate athletes train all year, they are more likely to spend more time with their coaches and teammates during their competitive season. Thus resulting in more stress and pressures from your sport and teammates that present Martens three subscale motives. However, other studies showed that athletes consume less alcohol during their competitive season than their off-season. Martens concluded that although their level of alcohol consumption decreases, their athlete-specific motives increase during the competitive season more so than their off-season.
Through this study, Martens and Martin wanted to find if their ADS could have constant factors in each season. Their findings showed that the ADS could be consistently used throughout an athlete’s competitive season as well as their off-season. Next, they wanted to discover if the subscales differed at all throughout each season. The result proved at the three subscale motives increased dramatically from athletes off to in season. Lastly, they studied the subscale motives for the ADS and whether the competitive season would increase these motives more than there off-season would. The alcohol consumption scores were associated with alcohol-related motives matching the ADS subscales, but one season did not rate higher than the other.
Throughout this article, Martens and Martin confirmed that their tool of the Athlete Drinking Scale is in fact successful. They also found that athletes drinking-motivations increase during their actual competitive season, and that it is a result from the environment of their teammates, coaches and pressures that come with the competitive season. As an athlete reading this, I had very little controversy in these researchers findings.

MARTENS, MATTHEW P., and JESSICA L. MARTIN. "College Athletes’ Drinking Motives And Competitive Seasonal Status: Additional Examination Of The Athlete Drinking Scale."Addiction Research & Theory 18.1 (2010): 23-32. Academic Search Premier. Web. 2 Nov. 2011.