Factor structure for measures of bystander likelihood, barriers, and actions to prevent problematic alcohol use among college students

Objective: There are currently no adequate measures to assess bystander intervention for problematic alcohol use (PAU).

Methods: We developed initial measures of bystander intervention for PAU, that include the constructs of likelihood to intervene, barriers to intervention, and actions taken in response to PAU situation. We sought to confirm the factor structure of the initial measures using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).

Participants: We administered the measures in a college student sample (N = 1,270) recruited through Prime Panels.

Results: CFA analysis resulted in the following two scales: 1) Bystander Alcohol Likelihood to Intervene (14 items), 2) Overcoming Bystander Alcohol Barriers to Intervene (22 items). The Bystander Alcohol Actions (22 items) was formative, no CFA was conducted. We found that the hypothesized model displayed significantly superior fit to all other models.

Conclusion: These measures can be used to inform bystander intervention programs for PAU and as tools to evaluate bystander intervention programs.