Elsevier

Journal of Adolescent Health

Volume 31, Issue 3, September 2002, Pages 223-225
Journal of Adolescent Health

Adolescent health brief
The relation between alcohol abuse or dependence and academic performance in first-year college students

https://doi.org/10.1016/S1054-139X(02)00362-2Get rights and content

Abstract

A large-scale study (N = 3518) was designed to assess the academic performance of college freshmen in relationship to alcohol abuse or dependence. Alcohol abuse or dependence was identified in 501 (14%) students; of these, 128 (3.6%) were alcohol-dependent. Of the students who met criteria of alcohol dependence, 62.5% failed in their first year, compared to 50% among students who did not report these drinking problems.

Section snippets

Methods

We assessed the relation between alcohol abuse or dependence and the academic performance of a first-year cohort of students at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium.

Results

In this group of 3518 students, alcohol abuse and dependence was identified in 501 (14.2%). Of the 501 students, 375 (10.5%) met DSM-IV criteria for alcohol abuse and 128 (3.6%) met criteria for alcohol dependence. Nearly one-third of the first-year students passed their exams at the first attempt in June. Approximately one-third of the students who tried again in September passed the exams. A total of 49.7% (N = 790) of the male students and 48.9% (N = 944) of the female students moved up to

Discussion

The relationship between problematic alcohol use and academic performance is of great concern on college campuses. In this study, we tried to avoid the limitations of previous studies highlighted by Wood et al. [5].

First, our study was performed on a large sample of first-year students in the same time period [6]. Second, academic performance was not based on self-reporting, but rather on official university records. Third, we used DSM-IV criteria to provide a formal assessment of the presence

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Mathieu Roelants, who linked the coded study results of all first-year students, and to Merck-Belgolabo, Belgium, which made this study possible.

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