Our results need to be interpreted in light of several limitations. First, we conceptualized positive and negative reinforcement broadly, and we acknowledge that our measure of positive and negative reinforcement using the Alcohol Expectancy Questionnaire (AEQ) is only one of many ways to assess these broad and complicated constructs. We used AEQ because it was the only measure related to positive and negative reinforcement available in our dataset that were repeatedly and concurrently assessed along with alcohol use outcomes, which was necessary to address our research questions. We acknowledge that although the AEQ subscales were designed to measure positive and negative reinforcement expected from drinking (Brown et al., 1980; Brown et al., 1987), they might not exactly represent the corresponding motives that made a person drink. Cooper (1994) argued that expecting certain effects of alcohol is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for drinking to achieve the expected effects. Future research is warranted to replicate the current findings using other measures of positive and negative reinforcement such as the Drinking Motives Questionnaire (Cooper, 1994). Second, our measure of negative reinforcement
