Proximal Associations Among College Students' Alcohol Use and Cyber Partner Abuse Perpetration

Objective: Research and theory support alcohol use as a proximal antecedent to in-person partner abuse (PA). However, event-level research has not examined cyber PA thereby limiting our understanding of whether alcohol use proximally relates to cyber PA. Method: We collected daily data on alcohol use and cyber PA from college students (N = 236; 73.3% women) for 60 consecutive days. Controlling for cyber PA victimization, we evaluated whether college students who consumed more drinks perpetrated more cyber PA (between-person effects), whether cyber PA was more likely to occur on days in which alcohol use was higher than each individual's average (within-person effect), and whether within- and between-person associations between alcohol use and cyber PA varied by sex. Results: Women were more likely than men to perpetrate cyber PA but there were no sex differences in the association between alcohol use and cyber PA. Multilevel modeling revealed that neither higher average alcohol use, nor drinking more than one usually does on a given day, associated with odds of subsequent cyber PA. Although alcohol use did not associate with odds of subsequent cyber PA, posthoc analyses revealed that odds of cyber PA increased as alcohol use increased, regardless of whether drinking occurred before or after cyber PA. Thus, alcohol use may have been more likely to occur after cyber PA. Conclusions: Results did not support alcohol use as a proximal antecedent to college students' cyber PA. Future research should investigate of cyber PA as a proximal risk factor for subsequent alcohol use.