Ecological momentary assessment of racial discrimination and same-day and next-day alcohol use among Black college students.

BACKGROUND

Black college students experience elevated minority stress, particularly racial discrimination, which has been linked to greater alcohol use and related harms. Yet, research on this disparity overwhelmingly relies on cross-sectional or retrospective designs that fail to capture the dynamic nature of racial discrimination and its real-time influence on alcohol use risk. This study used ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to examine daily associations between racial discrimination and alcohol use in this population.

METHODS

Black undergraduate and graduate students (N = 97;76% women) attending four predominantly White institutions completed 14 days of EMAs (five random daily prompts plus a morning survey capturing overnight experiences). Daily racial discrimination (any vs. none) and alcohol use (any use, quantity) were aggregated and modeled with multilevel generalized linear models testing between-person, within-person concurrent, and lagged effects, controlling for demographic covariates.

RESULTS

Participants reported an average of 6.77 racial discrimination incidents across 14 days. After accounting for between-person differences in discrimination frequency, within-person analyses showed that on days when students experienced racial discrimination, they consumed more alcohol that same day (p = .020). Experiencing racial discrimination on one day was also associated with greater alcohol consumption the following day (p < .001) and 1.69 ×  higher odds of next-day drinking initiation (p = .015). Notably, higher average racial discrimination (between-person) was not associated with alcohol use once lagged effects were considered.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings underscore the need for culturally responsive, real-time interventions addressing the episodic and temporally persistent nature of discrimination-related alcohol risk among Black college students, including both drinking initiation and escalation.