How drinking motives mediate associations between sexual orientation and indicators of alcohol use – a study among young Swiss men
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Individuals with a minority sexual orientation have consistently been found to face a greater risk of mental health problems and problematic substance use than heterosexual individuals. The present study examined whether differences in alcohol use or alcohol use disorder (AUD) symptoms across the spectrum of sexual orientations could be explained by drinking motives (i.e., enhancement, social, coping and conformity motives). Method: A non-self-selective sample of non-abstinent, young Swiss men (N = 5,139; mean age = 25.4, SD = 1.25) completed a self-reporting questionnaire on sexual orientation (on a five-point attraction scale: heterosexual, mostly-heterosexual, bisexual, mostly-homosexual, homosexual), drinking motives, alcohol use indicators (e.g., heavy episodic drinking, Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test-Consumption [AUDIT-C]), and AUD symptoms. Structural equation modeling was used to test whether drinking motives mediated the associations between dummy-coded sexual orientation (with heterosexual men as the reference) and alcohol use indicators or AUD symptoms. Results: Mostly-heterosexual men exhibited higher scores on alcohol use indicators than heterosexual men, with almost full mediation through their drinking motives, specifically higher enhancement motives. They also reported more AUD symptoms, partially mediated through drinking motives, with comparable contributions from enhancement and coping motives. Homosexual men, however, displayed similar or lower scores for alcohol use indicators and AUD symptoms than heterosexual men, but these differences were not mediated by drinking motives. Indeed, homosexual men exhibited greater coping motives than heterosexual men. No significant results or discernible patterns emerged for bisexual or mostly-homosexual men. Discussion: These findings highlight the importance of considering the full spectrum of sexual orientations in healthcare and of broadening the focus on drinking motives beyond coping. Understanding the varied motives for alcohol use across the spectrum of sexual orientations facilitates tailored prevention strategies.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".