Adolescence is generally characterized by high rates of risk taking behavior [18], and the rates of some types of risky behavior increase when adolescents leave home [19]. Specifically, the risk for increases in problem drinking behaviors is high during the first year of college [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. It follows that the first year of college is an appropriate time to study the dispositional component of problem drinking risk.
