Fax +41 61 306 12 34 E-Mail karger@karger.ch www.karger.com Research Report Eur Addict Res 2011;17:250–261 DOI: 10.1159/000328510 Drinking Motives in Clinical and General Populations Laura Mezquita   a Sherry H. Stewart   b Manuel I. Ibáñez   a María A. Ruipérez   a Helena Villa   a Jorge Moya   a Generós Ortet   a   a  Department of Basic and Clinical Psychology and Psychobiology, Jaume I University, Castellón, Spain; b  Departments of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Community Health and Epidemiology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada forcement drinking motives. Conclusion: The Spanish M DMQ-R is a reliable and valid measure of drinking motives and has potential for assisting with treatment planning for problem drinkers. Copyright © 2011 S. Karger AG, Basel Introduction Alcohol abuse is a high-risk behavior for health and has been shown to be associated with more than 60 ill- nesses, both physical and mental, as well as numerous social problems [1, 2]. In Spain, 93.7% of the population between 15 and 64 years of age have consumed alcohol at least once, while most people drink regularly (76.7% dur- ing the last year, 64.6% in the last month, and 14.9% dai- ly in the last month). Moreover, 5.5% of the population engaged in high-risk levels of alcohol use in the last month [3]. From an integrative perspective, alcohol use and mis- use is influenced by a variety of proximal and distal, bio- logical (e.g. the level of response to alcohol [4]), psycho- logical (e.g. expectancies and personality disorders [5, 6]), and social variables (e.g. economic factors [7, 8]). ‘Drinking motives’ or the reasons why people drink alcohol are among the proximal psychological variables Key Words Drinking motives  Psychometrics  General population  Clinical population  Alcohol Abstract Aims: This paper had three aims: (1) to validate a Spanish ad- aptation of the Modified Drinking Motives Questionnaire- Revised (M DMQ-R), (2) to explore the relationship of each drinking motive with different patterns of alcohol use, and (3) to compare the drinking motives of moderate drinkers, heavy drinkers, and alcohol abusing/dependent individuals. Methods: Two studies were carried out. In Study 1, a sample of 488 participants completed the M DMQ-R and a self-re- port scale of alcohol consumption in order to study the fac- tor structure and different indices of reliability and validity of the Spanish M DMQ-R. In Study 2, we compared the drink- ing motives of moderate and heavy drinkers from Study 1 and an additional sample of 59 clinical drinkers. Results: The M DMQ-R demonstrated sound reliability and validity indi- ces. Coping-with-anxiety, social, and enhancement motives predicted higher alcohol use on weekends, but only coping- with-anxiety and social motives were related to consump- tion on weekdays. Furthermore, moderate drinkers had the lowest scores for all motives, whereas alcohol-dependent participants obtained the highest scores for negative rein- Received: January 11, 2011 Accepted: April 12, 2011 Published online: June 21, 2011 E u r o pea n Addi cti o n c R e e s ar h Laura Mezquita Department of Basic and Clinical Psychology and Psychobiology Jaume I University, Av. de Vicent Sos Baynat, s/n ES–12071 Castellón (Spain) Tel. +34 964 729 712, E-Mail lmezquit  @  psb.uji.es © 2011 S. Karger AG, Basel 1022–6877/11/0175–0250$38.00/0 Accessible online at: www.karger.com/ear