Alcohol-Related Content Poster Prototype Scale

Abstract

The Alcohol-Related Content Poster Prototype Scale (ARC-PPS), developed by Razo and colleagues in 2023, is a specialized inventory designed to quantify college students’ perceptions of peers who frequently share alcohol-related content (ARC) on social media platforms.

The scale’s construction began with an initial qualitative phase where participants provided open-ended adjectives describing these individuals. Subsequent analysis utilizing the R statistical environment and the quanteda library (version 2.0.1) identified the 30 most frequent adjectives, which formed the basis for the items. Validation data were collected from two independent samples of university students in the United States. Following rigorous data cleaning (excluding responses completed in under two minutes), a factor analysis was conducted, ultimately supporting a robust three-factor structure, affirming the scale’s validity for measuring these specific personality characteristics.

Keywords

Alcohol-Related Content, College Students’ Drinking, Despondent, Hedonistic, Poster Prototypes, Sociable, Social Media Prototype, Personality Characteristics, Confirmatory Factor Analysis

Authors

Joseph M. Razo, Robert E. Wickham, Ergie P. Inocian, Abigail R. Kra-Friedman, Mai-Ly N. Steers

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Alcohol-Related Content Poster Prototype Scale (Razo et al., 2023) is to systematically assess the conceptualization held by college students regarding their peers who utilize social media to post content related to alcohol consumption. This measure provides a standardized method for exploring these mental models, known as ARC poster prototypes.

By quantifying these prototypes (e.g., Hedonistic, Sociable, Despondent), the scale aims to establish a link between students’ perceptions of ARC posters and their own subsequent drinking behaviors. Understanding how these prototypes influence college students’ drinking is crucial for developing targeted intervention strategies related to risky alcohol use.

Construct

The ARC-PPS measures the psychological construct of social prototypes, specifically focusing on the perceived personality characteristics attributed to individuals who post alcohol-related content online. The scale operationalizes these perceptions into three distinct dimensions:

• Hedonistic: Reflecting perceptions of thrill-seeking and pleasure-oriented behaviors.
• Sociable: Reflecting perceptions related to being outgoing, popular, and socially engaged.
• Despondent: Reflecting perceptions of sadness, low mood, or general unhappiness.

Validity

The validity of the Alcohol-Related Content Poster Prototype Scale is supported by its ability to predict drinking behaviors among university students. The study demonstrated significant statistical pathways indicating that the perception and posting of Alcohol-Related Content (ARC) were linked to subsequent drinking outcomes.

Crucially, the factor identified as the “sociable prototype” acted as a significant psychological mediator. This indicates that the association between viewing or posting ARC and the actual act of drinking is partially explained by the belief that ARC posters embody positive, sociable characteristics, thereby normalizing or encouraging the behavior.

Reliability

At the time of publication, specific internal reliability data (such as Cronbach’s alpha values for the factors) for the Alcohol-Related Content Poster Prototype Scale are not available in the source documentation.

Factor Analysis

The structural integrity of the Alcohol-Related Content Poster Prototype Scale was examined using both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). Initial EFA suggested a five-factor solution based on eigenvalues; however, visual inspection of the scree plot strongly favored a more parsimonious three-factor model.

The initial three-factor EFA model achieved model fit statistics that approached acceptable thresholds, including a Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) of 0.056 (90% CI: 0.055, 0.057), a Comparative Fit Index (CFI) of 0.894, and a Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) of 0.868. Given the standard requirement for good fit (CFI/TLI ≥ 0.9 and RMSEA ≤ 0.05), several items were identified as problematic and subsequently removed:

• Items 5 (social), 17 (carefree), and 22 (bold) were eliminated due to high cross-loadings between Factor 1 and Factor 2.
• Items 11 (young), 16 (rich), and 19 (typical) were removed because they failed to demonstrate strong loadings on any single latent factor.

The final three-factor ordinal CFA was conducted on the remaining 26 items. This analysis yielded a marginal fit for the observed sample data: χ²(249) = 6577.671, p < 0.001, CFI = 0.814, TLI = 0.794, and RMSEA = 0.079 (90% CI: 0.078, 0.081).

Instrument

Test Type: Original Inventory/Questionnaire

Format: The instrument requires participants to rate a list of 26 personality characteristics (adjectives) based on the extent to which they describe college students who post alcohol-related content on social media. Ratings are made on a 6-point Likert scale, anchored by “not at all” (1) and “very much” (6). The 26 items map onto the three factors: Hedonistic, Sociable, and Despondent.

Language Available: English

Population Group: Human (Male and Female university students)

Age Group: Adulthood (18 years and older), primarily focusing on Young Adulthood (18–29 years)

Population Details:

• Location: United States
• Respondents: University Students

Test Methodology: Test Validity, Factor Analysis (Exploratory Factor Analysis, Confirmatory Factor Analysis)

Keywords

Poster Prototypes, Social Media Prototype, Likert scale, Personality Characteristics, College Students’ Drinking, Alcohol-Related Content, Hedonistic, Despondent, Sociable

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: 0000-0002-4203-2989 (Mai-Ly N. Steers)

Affiliation Email addresses: [email protected] (Mai-Ly N. Steers)

Correspondence Address: Duquesne University, School of Nursing, 600 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States, 15282

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

Permissions: Contact Corresponding Author

Fee: No

Test Year: 2023

Reference’s

Razo, J. M., Wickham, R. E., Inocian, E. P., Kra-Friedman, A. R., & Steers, M.-L. N. (2023). Development and validation of the Alcohol‐Related Content Poster Prototype Scale: Exploring the impact of social media prototypes on college students’ drinking. Alcohol: Clinical and Experimental Research, 47(4), 796–805. doi.org/10.1111/acer.15038

Items of the Alcohol-Related Content Poster Prototype Scale

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

No data is Available.