Religion and Alcohol Use among College Students: Exploring the Role of Domain-Specific Religious Salience

Abstract

A growing body of work examines links between religious involvement and alcohol use patterns. Most studies in this vein have relied upon generic measures of religion such as affiliation, service attendance, or overall salience. This study contributes to the literature by developing refined measures of domain-specific religious salience, and exploring their links with the frequency of alcohol use in a diverse sample of college students. Results confirm the importance of domain-specific religious salience in shaping alcohol choices, but at the same time, also show that overall levels of such salience in this sample are relatively low, indicating that other influences (e.g., peers, parents) are also important. The effects of other religious variables (e.g., religious tradition, attendance, prayer) on drinking frequency are largely indirect, serving primarily to heighten the salience of religious convictions in the domain of alcohol behavior. Implications, study limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.