A Daily Measure of Positive and Negative Alcohol Expectancies and Evaluations: Documenting a Two-Factor Structure and Within- and Between-Person Variability

Objective:Despite the documented importance of alcohol outcome expectancies in predicting alcohol use and related consequences, little research has explored within-person variability in expectancies. This article details the construction and psychometric analysis of a measure of alcohol expectancies specifically designed for daily assessment.Method:We developed a 15-item instrument to measure the likelihood of experiencing various outcomes from drinking, as well as the subjective evaluation of these outcomes. College students (N = 352; mean age = 19.7 years, SD = 1.26; 53.4% female) participated in a yearlong study wherein they completed three computerized interviews daily via mobile phones for 2 weeks in each academic quarter. Multilevel exploratory factor analysis was used to examine dimensionality at between-person and within-person levels, and generalizability coefficients were calculated to establish reliability.Results:Intraclass correlation coefficients were generally between .30 and .40, demonstra...