Abstract

There has been few research attempting to measure drinking motives quantitatively in Korea. Developing a reliable scale measuring drinking motives will be very useful for future research as well as clinical assessment. In the present study, after verbal protocol analysis, a questionnaire (25 items) for measuring drinking motives was developed based on Cox and Klinger's(1988, 1990) 4 categories of motives. Responses from 227 university students were factor-analyzed using principal-axis(PAF) extraction procedure, followed by oblique rotation. Four factors with eigenvalues of great than 1 were finally extracted. Analysis of the item content of the factors indicated dimensions tapping enhancement, coping, conformity, and social motives respectively. On the basis of factor loadings and item-total correlations, four items on each of the intended dimensions were retained (total 16 items). Cronbach alpha coefficients of each subscale ranged from .76 to .89, which showed satisfactory internal consistency. There were significant gender differences in subscales of drinking motives, but these effects were generally small in magnitude.