Rob Turrisi’s research while affiliated with Pennsylvania State University and other places

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Publications (183)


A longitudinal examination of factors Predicting maternal permissiveness toward underage student drinking across the First three years of college
  • Article

April 2025

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11 Reads

Addictive Behaviors

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Rob Turrisi


Hazing prevention insights from related research

August 2024

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27 Reads

New Directions for Student Services

Hazing is a form of violence that can have short‐ and long‐term physical, emotional, and psychological impacts on individuals and communities. This article reviews existing approaches for addressing public health challenges adjacent to hazing such as school violence, bullying, and sexual violence. Employing evidence‐based strategies that are effective in these contexts, such as increasing protective factors for individuals, reshaping group dynamics, and shifting social norms through multi‐tiered intervention, may be effective for hazing prevention. The article concludes with recommendations to guide hazing intervention and educational efforts.


Alcohol's Role in Sexual Decision Making in First-Year College Women: An Event-Level Assessment

July 2023

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23 Reads

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2 Citations

Psychology of Women Quarterly

Sexual decision making is often grounded in social scripts that can be detrimental to women's healthy relationships and sexual development during the transition to college. Little is known about the malleable decision-making processes and drinking behaviors that influence sexual behaviors from day-to-day. We examined whether women were more likely to engage in sexual behaviors on days they had higher intentions and willingness to engage in sex or drink alcohol. We also explored interactions between sex- and alcohol-related decision constructs. Eighty-two first-year college women completed 14 days of ecological momentary assessment, reporting on alcohol- and sex-related intentions and willingness (3x daily) and daily drinking and sexual behaviors. We found partial support for our hypotheses: intentions and willingness to have sex were positively associated with sex behaviors, but the willingness to drink was negatively associated with sex behaviors. Heavy drinking was associated with sexual behavior, even when women indicated no prior willingness to engage in sexual behavior on those days. Findings highlight the need to address event-level variability in sexual decision making, with a particular focus on how alcohol impacts these processes. Further, the robust association between sexual intentions and behavior suggests intention setting may be a particularly useful sexual empowerment education tool.


Baseline Protective Behavioral Strategy Use Predicts More Moderate Transdermal Alcohol Concentration Dynamics and Fewer Negative Consequences of Drinking in Young Adults’ Natural Settings
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  • Publisher preview available

June 2023

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18 Reads

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4 Citations

Psychology of Addictive Behaviors

Objective: Test whether frequent protective behavioral strategies (PBS) users report (a) fewer alcohol-related consequences and (b) less risky alcohol intoxication dynamics (measured via transdermal alcohol concentration [TAC] sensor “features”) in daily life. Method: Two hundred twenty-two frequently heavy-drinking young adults (Mage = 22.3 years) wore TAC sensors for 6 consecutive days. TAC features peak (maximum TAC), rise rate (speed of TAC increase), and area under the curve (AUC) were derived for each day. Negative alcohol-related consequences were measured in the morning after each self-reported drinking day. Past-year PBS use was measured at baseline. Results: Young adults reporting more frequent baseline PBS use showed (a) fewer alcohol-related consequences and (b) lower intoxication dynamics on average (less AUC, lower peaks, and slower rise rates). Limiting/stopping and manner of drinking PBS showed the same pattern of findings as the total score. Serious harm reduction PBS predicted fewer negative alcohol-related consequences, but not TAC features. Multilevel path models showed that TAC features peak and rise rate partially explained associations between PBS (total, limiting/stopping, and manner of drinking) and consequences. Independent contributions of PBS subscales were small and nonsignificant, suggesting that total PBS use was a more important predictor of risk/protection than the specific types of PBS used. Conclusions: Young adults using more total PBS may experience fewer alcohol-related consequences during real-world drinking episodes in part through less risky intoxication dynamics (TAC features). Future research measuring PBS at the daily level is needed to formally test TAC features as day-level mechanisms of protection from acute alcohol-related consequences.

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"Let's Not Talk About It": Parents' Reasons for Not Discussing Alcohol Use With Emerging Adult Children

May 2023

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38 Reads

Journal of Adolescent Health

Purpose: It is unclear why parents avoid discussing alcohol use with their emerging adult (EA) children. Understanding parents' reasons for not communicating could inform parent-based interventions (PBIs) aimed at encouraging constructive discussions. The current study adds to the literature by examining common reasons parents avoid discussing alcohol use with their EA children. Methods: Parents of EAs completed a web-based survey that included items assessing reasons for not communicating about alcohol, as well as measures of alcohol communication intentions, parenting self-efficacy, relationship quality, and interest in participating in an alcohol PBI. Results: Results from the Exploratory Factor Analysis revealed five core reasons why parents do not communicate about alcohol: (1) they lack the skills or resources to communicate; (2) they believe their child is a nondrinker; (3) they believe their child is an independent, trustworthy decision maker; (4) they can teach their child how to drink through modeling; (5) they believe communication is futile. Believing that an EA could and should make their own alcohol decisions was the most common reason for not communicating. In multivariate analyses, this reason for not communicating was associated with greater levels of parental self-efficacy and perceiving a child to drink less alcohol. Further, this reason for not communicating was associated with lower intentions to communicate about drinking and less interest in taking part in a PBI. Discussion: Most parents reported barriers to communication. Understanding why parents are reluctant to discuss alcohol use could inform PBI efforts.


A Comparison of Parents’ and Students’ Reports of General and Alcohol-Specific Parenting Behaviors Across the Four Years of College

September 2022

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26 Reads

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4 Citations

Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs

Objective: Whether college students' reports of their parents' behaviors are as reliable a predictor of student drinking as their parents' own reports remains an open question and a point of contention in the literature. To address this, the current study examined concordance between college student and mother/father reports of the same parenting behaviors relevant to parent-based college drinking interventions (relationship quality, monitoring, and permissiveness), and the extent to which student and parent reports differed in their relation to college drinking and consequences. Method: The sample consisted of 1,429 students and 1,761 parents recruited from three large public universities in the United States (814 mother-daughter, 563 mother-son, 233 father-daughter, and 151 father-son dyads). Students and their parents were each invited to complete four surveys over the course of the students' first four years of college (one survey per year). Results: Paired samples t-tests revealed that parent reports of parenting constructs were typically more conservative than student reports. Intraclass correlations revealed moderate associations between parent and student reports on quality of parenting, general monitoring, and permissiveness. The associations between parenting constructs and drinking and consequences were also consistent when using parent and student reports of permissiveness. Results were generally consistent for all four types of dyads, and at each of the four time points. Conclusions: Taken together, these findings provide additional support for the use of student reports of parental behaviors as a valid proxy of parents' actual reports and as a reliable predictor of college student drinking and consequences.


A Preliminary Examination of the Effects of Perceived Parent Approval toward Lower and Higher Risk Drinking Situations on Alcohol-Related Consequences in a Sample of Underage Adults

August 2022

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21 Reads

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1 Citation

Parents of young adults may approve of their child drinking in lower risk drinking situations (LRDS) because they believe it will prevent their child from drinking in more risky ways. However, when young adults believe their parents approves of drinking in LRDS they experience more negative alcohol consequences, not less. A plausible explanation for the effects of LRDS on risky drinking is that approval toward LRDS implicitly suggests approval toward other drinking situations that most parents would not permit (i.e., higher risk drinking situations [HRDS]). The current study addresses a gap in the literature by investigating perceived parental approval of drinking in HRDS as a mediator of perceived LRDS approval on underage emerging adults’ (UEAs’) drinking and consequences. UEAs (18–20 years of age) were recruited from all 50 states via MTurk to complete a two-part web-based survey study (N=315). Measures included in the mediation model were perceived parental approval of drinking (both LRDS and HRDS related), peak drinking occasion consumption, alcohol-related consequences, and baseline covariates (birth sex and perceived peer drinking norms). Results from the mediation model revealed that perceived LRDS approval was associated with increases in perceived HRDS approval, which, in turn, predicted consequences (controlling for baseline peak drinking, consequences, and covariates). Findings from this study provide the first evidence to support perceived HRDS approval as a mechanism through which LRDS approval influences alcohol-related consequences. These results suggest that PBIs may benefit from targeting parent approval toward both LRDS and HRDS.


What Predicts Willingness to Experience Negative Consequences in College Student Drinkers?

July 2022

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22 Reads

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1 Citation

Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs

Objective: Research has shown that students who were more willing to experience consequences reported higher rates of alcohol consumption and negative consequences. The present study used a longitudinal design to examine intra- and interpersonal consequence-specific predictors of willingness to experience negative consequences. Method: Students (N = 2,024) were assessed in the fall (Time [T] 1) and spring (T2) semesters of their first year in college. Intrapersonal constructs (i.e., expectancies, subjective evaluations, self-efficacy), interpersonal constructs (i.e., peer descriptive, injunctive norms), and personality constructs (i.e., self-regulation, impulsivity, sensation seeking) were assessed at T1 and willingness to experience negative alcohol-related consequences was assessed 6 months later. A structural path model examined the relationship between T1 predictors and T2 willingness. T1 drinking and sex were included as covariates. Results: These results demonstrated significant positive relationships between T1 participants' subjective evaluations of consequences, expectancies of experiencing consequences, and T2 willingness to experience negative consequences. Further, impulsivity, sensation seeking, and T1 drinking showed significant, positive associations with willingness, whereas higher self-regulation was significantly associated with lower willingness. Men were significantly more willing to experience negative consequences than women. No significant associations were observed between normative perceptions and willingness. Conclusions: Intrapersonal and personality constructs, as well as previous drinking, were significantly associated with willingness to experience consequences whereas interpersonal constructs were not. Men were significantly more willing to experience negative consequences. College student interventions may benefit from focusing on significant constructs identified in the current study (e.g., enhancing self-regulation) and focusing on students with higher willingness to experience negative consequences.


Procedures overview.
Fixation time on the tan images by condition for each pair of Instagram screenshots.
Standardized beta coefficients of the stepwise regressions.
The Effects of Embedded Skin Cancer Interventions on Sun-Safety Attitudes and Attention Paid to Tan Women on Instagram

April 2022

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64 Reads

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5 Citations

Background and Objectives Because of high skin cancer risks for young women, it is vital that effective interventions reach and influence this demographic. Visual social media platforms, like Instagram, are popular with young women and are an appropriate intervention site; yet, they also host competing images idealizing tan skin. The present study tested the ability of digital sun-safety interventions to affect self-control-related emotions and visual attention to subsequent tan-ideal images as well as sun-safety attitudes. Methods Women were recruited from a large public Mid-Atlantic university in the United States. Participants (N = 120) were randomly assigned to view an appearance benefits intervention, a self-control emotions intervention, or a control message, each designed to look like an Instagram sponsored story. After self-reporting self-compassion and anticipated pride, participants then viewed seven pairs of Instagram posts featuring either tan or pale women while an eye tracker assessed visual attention. Finally, participants self-reported their responses to questions assessing sun-safety-related norms, efficacy, and attitudes. Results A mixed design analysis of covariance revealed that women who first viewed the appearance benefits intervention story spent less time visually fixated on Instagram images of tan women than did those who viewed the self-control emotions intervention or control message (p = 0.005, ηp2 = 0.087). Regressions also revealed interactions between the intervention conditions and feelings of anticipated pride on both visual attention and sun-safety attitudes. Conclusion Sponsored stories on Instagram can promote sun-safety attitudes, depending on the emotional responses they generate. Additionally, sponsored interventions can affect subsequent visual attention.


Citations (88)


... Studies consistently show that alcohol is the drug of choice among youth, with a significant percentage engaging in heavy episodic drinking [5,6]. Heavy drinking has been linked to increased sexual behavior even when individuals did not initially express willingness to engage in such activities [7]. Additionally, engaging in sexual intercourse under the influence of alcohol poses significant health risks and challenges for adolescents, including an increased risk of sexually transmitted infections (STDs), unintended pregnancy, and HIV infection [8,9]. ...

Reference:

Prevalence and correlates of sexual intercourse under influence of alcohol among Thai adolescents: lessons from a nationwide school-based survey
Alcohol's Role in Sexual Decision Making in First-Year College Women: An Event-Level Assessment
  • Citing Article
  • July 2023

Psychology of Women Quarterly

... There are four main "elementary" features that have been derived from TAC sensors to characterize the dynamics of a drinking episode. These features include the speed of alcohol absorption (rise rate) and elimination ( fall rate), the time spent biologically exposed to alcohol (duration), and the maximum objective intoxication level (peak; Didier et al., 2024;Fridberg et al., 2022;Leffingwell et al., 2013;Russell et al., 2022Russell et al., , 2024. Russell et al. (2022) found that each of these features is a predictor of the number of negative alcohol-related consequences experienced. ...

Baseline Protective Behavioral Strategy Use Predicts More Moderate Transdermal Alcohol Concentration Dynamics and Fewer Negative Consequences of Drinking in Young Adults’ Natural Settings

Psychology of Addictive Behaviors

... what is found in the literature bolsters the concept that adolescents may be attending to and encoding their parents' reasons for drinking. Given that adolescent perceptions of parenting factors are more strongly predictive of risky behaviors than parent self-report (Smith et al., 1999;Trager et al., 2023;Varvil-Weld et al., 2013), it seems important in future work to continue studying children and adolescents' perceptions and perhaps their evolution across development and contexts (i.e., environments that vary in a range of factors known to affect alcohol use including various parental drinking behaviors). ...

A Comparison of Parents’ and Students’ Reports of General and Alcohol-Specific Parenting Behaviors Across the Four Years of College
  • Citing Article
  • September 2022

Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs

... To demonstrate the validity of the single-item measure of permissiveness used here, we conducted exploratory analyses using data collected for another project (N = 315, M age = 19.28, SD = 0.77, 52.9% male; Trager et al., 2022) to determine if a 13item measure of perceived parent permissiveness toward drinking developed for young adults (α = .94) was more strongly correlated with typical weekly drinking than the single-item measure used here. ...

A Preliminary Examination of the Effects of Perceived Parent Approval toward Lower and Higher Risk Drinking Situations on Alcohol-Related Consequences in a Sample of Underage Adults
  • Citing Preprint
  • August 2022

... Most of the research was conducted using Facebook. Of the 23 studies, most (n=14, 61%) were conducted in the United States [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27], with a smaller number conducted in other countries: the United Kingdom (n=3, 13%) [28][29][30], Australia (n=3, 13%) [31][32][33], the Netherlands (n=1, 4%) [34], Denmark (n=1, 4%) [35], and Saudi Arabia (n=1, 4%) [36]. [33,35], and 4% (1/23) were published in 2016 [23]. ...

The Effects of Embedded Skin Cancer Interventions on Sun-Safety Attitudes and Attention Paid to Tan Women on Instagram

... Of these, the prevention of alcohol use and the teaching of safe drinking practices were the most common motivations, particularly among children below the legal drinking age. These two motivations can be contradictory, making it challenging for parents to discuss alcohol use, especially with young adult children, and for parents to balance fostering independent choices with reminders of the potential negative effects of alcohol use [12]. One analysis demonstrated that parental permissiveness was consistently and positively associated with college drinking and associated consequences when confounding factors were not considered [13]. ...

Assessing Parents’ Motives for Talking about Alcohol with their Emerging Adult Children
  • Citing Article
  • October 2021

Addictive Behaviors

... Consistent with the assumptions of ecological systems theory, 6 social learning theory, 7 and primary socialization theory, 8 parents' attitudes and behaviors continue to influence their children's alcohol use during the first year of college and beyond. [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] Additionally, parents are becoming more involved in their emerging adult children's lives 19 and colleges employ multiple avenues to engage parents (e.g., orientations, online resource pages, newsletters, events). 20 According to the U.S. Surgeon General's Report on Alcohol, Drugs, and Health, 21 parent-based interventions (PBIs) implemented prior to students' arrival on campus can prevent and reduce students' alcohol risk during the first year of college. ...

The Prospective Effects of Parents’ and Friends’ Approval of Drinking on Simultaneous Alcohol and Marijuana Use during College
  • Citing Article
  • October 2021

... In terms of DAD among college students, environmental factors include the type of residence, such as living on-campus in dorms versus off-campus housing, the availability of alcohol on or near campus and campus culture, and the extent to which drinking is integrated into social events (which can affect exposure to drinking behaviors). Five studies (n = 5) focused on environmental-related factors [23,24,30,42,45]. ...

Alcohol, marijuana, and nicotine use as predictors of impaired driving and riding with an impaired driver among college students who engage in polysubstance use
  • Citing Article
  • September 2021

Accident Analysis & Prevention

... The motive of drinking to cope with their tension may be associated with some negative consequences (Merrill & Read, 2010). Drinking to cope is thought to indicate a lack of adaptive coping strategies and emotion regulation (McClain et al., 2022). Some studies have shown that some individuals use alcohol as a tool for social and emotional regulation (Hull & Slone, 2004;Klanecky et al., 2019). ...

Emotion-Based Decision-Making as a Predictor of Alcohol-Related Consequences in College Students
  • Citing Article
  • August 2021

Addictive Behaviors

... In total, 18 records met all the inclusion criteria, describing a total of 14 different interventions. We found five records with the same main author describing the same intervention (The eCHECKUP TO GO) [24][25][26][27][28], so prevent duplicate studies that might lead to biased results, we assessed the time of recruitment, the sample size, and the time of follow-up [29]. The decision was to include in the narrative synthesis the work of Doumas, D. M. et al., (2021) since it had the best combination of the longest time of follow-up (6 months) with the greatest sample size (n = 311) [28]. ...

A Randomized Controlled Trial of the eCHECKUP to GO for High School Seniors across the Academic Year
  • Citing Article
  • August 2021