(PS1-A3) An Exploratory Factor Analysis of an E-toke Marijuana Motives Scale with Mandated Students

Marijuana is the second most widely used drug among college students after alcohol (Schulenberg et al., 2020), and its use has been associated with severe academic consequences, including higher rates of dropout (Suerken et al., 2016). College campuses maintain substance use policies as a response to student marijuana and other drug misuse, and sanctions for violating these policies often mandate students to attend substance use intervention programs (Montemayor et al., 2022). The Cannabis Electronic Checkup to Go (e-TOKE) is a widely used online brief motivational intervention program that provides feedback to college students to encourage them to alter their marijuana use (eCheckup to Go, 2021). While the measures included in e-TOKE have clear clinical utility, their psychometric properties have not been evaluated. The current study was designed to evaluate the factor structure and validity of the 19-item marijuana use motives scale included in the intervention.

The e-TOKE program was adopted by a large public university, which collected data on the variables of interest from 2014 to 2021. Participants were 235 students from this large public university who were mandated to complete e-TOKE (83% male, MAge = 19.20, SDAge = 1.34). Students completed a battery of measures that assessed marijuana use and the motives and consequences of use.

An exploratory factor analysis was conducted to investigate the structure of the marijuana motives scale. Based on examination of eigenvalues, the scree plot, fit indices, and consideration of a theoretically supported model, two factors were retained. The two factors were moderately correlated (r = .44). The first factor contained 10 items and represented use motives to lessen negative affect (e.g., “Marijuana helps me reduce stress”; coping motives). The second factor contained 9 items and represented use motives to increase positive affect (e.g., “I feel more confident”; enhancement motives) or improve social interaction (“I feel more comfortable talking to people”; social motives).

A hierarchical regression analysis was conducted to investigate the associations between marijuana use motives and consequences of use. The use motives scale contributed unique variance after first accounting for participant sex, age, and number of weeks per month participants used marijuana. Coping motives (β = .384, p < .001) positively predicted consequences, whereas enhancement/social motives (β = -.108, p = .071) did not reach statistical significance.

These findings suggest that the marijuana use motives scale included in the e-TOKE intervention may be split into two subscales that are consistent with previous research on marijuana use motives: coping and enhancement/social motives (Simons et al., 1998). This dichotomy could have important implications for treatment, such as engineering e-TOKE interventions based on which category of use motives is more heavily endorsed (Bresin & Mekawi, 2019). Additionally, the finding that coping motives significantly predicted marijuana use consequences provides support for the concurrent validity of e-TOKE’s marijuana use motives measure.