ORIGINAL ARTICLE Alcohol Expectancies, Pregaming, Drinking Games, and Hazardous Alcohol Use in a Multiethnic Sample of College Students Byron L. Zamboanga Æ Seth J. Schwartz Æ Lindsay S. Ham Æ Brian Borsari Æ Kathryne Van Tyne Published online: 13 February 2009 Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009 Abstract Pregaming is a risky drinking behavior that occurs when students drink alcohol before a primary social gathering or event. The paucity of research on pregaming highlights the need for research on the correlates of drinking behaviors, such as alcohol expectancies, that might increase the likelihood of pregaming. Thus, we sought to examine how alcohol expectancies and the val- uations (i.e., desirability) of these expectancies are associated with frequency of pregaming, drinking game (DG) participation, and hazardous alcohol use. Students (N = 1327) from nine U.S. colleges and universities completed self-report surveys. Results showed sufficient discriminant validity among pregaming behaviors, DG participation, and hazardous alcohol use. Findings also revealed that pregaming mediated the associations between positive alcohol expectancies and hazardous drinking behaviors. Finally, when we tested for invariance across gender, ethnicity, and legal versus underage alcohol users, we found full invariance across gender and ethnicity, but not for legal versus underage alcohol users. Future research directions and potential implications for prevention efforts are discussed. Keywords Alcohol expectancies Á Drinking games Á Hazardous alcohol use Á Pregaming Introduction Hazardous alcohol use among college students continues to be a major health concern (see Ham and Hope 2003, for a review). Many students engage in several risky drinking practices that may be associated with hazardous alcohol use (i.e., risky alcohol use patterns and alcohol-related aversive consequences, which may place one at a high risk for alcohol use disorders and other health problems) (Per- kins 2002). Pregaming (also referred to as pre-partying, front-loading, or pre-bar), which ‘‘occurs when students drink alcohol before a primary social gathering or event’’ (Borsari et al. 2007, p. 2695), has recently received atten- tion as a particularly risky drinking practice. Significant numbers of students engage in this practice (e.g., 64% of the college students in a recent survey reported pregaming at least once in the past month; Pedersen and LaBrie 2007), These ethnic breakdowns are available from the first author on request. B. L. Zamboanga (&) Á K. Van Tyne Department of Psychology, Smith College, 44 College Lane, Northampton, MA 01063, USA e-mail: bzamboan@email.smith.edu K. Van Tyne e-mail: kvantyne@email.smith.edu S. J. Schwartz Center for Family Studies, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami, Miami, FL 33199, USA e-mail: SSchwartz@med.miami.edu L. S. Ham Department of Psychology, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR 72701, USA e-mail: lham@uark.edu B. Borsari Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies, Brown University, Box G-S121, Providence, RI 02903, USA e-mail: brian.borsari@va.gov; Brian_Borsari@brown.edu B. Borsari Providence VA Medical Center, 830 Chalkstone Avenue, Providence, RI 02908, USA 123 Cogn Ther Res (2010) 34:124–133 DOI 10.1007/s10608-009-9234-1