Drinking Motives Questionnaire (DMQ)

The Drinking Motives Questionnaire (DMQ) contains 15 reasons why people might be motivated to drink alcoholic beverages. Participants rate on a 4-point scale how frequently each of the 15 listed reasons motivate them to drink alcoholic beverages. The measure yields three scale scores reflecting different motives for drinking alcohol.

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Item Coding

The DMQ consists of 15 items that are rated on a 4-point Likert scale as follows:

Never/Almost never	Sometimes	Often	Almost always/Always
1	2	3	4

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Scales

The DMQ yields three primary scales. Description of the scales and item loadings are listed below. Scale scores are calculated as the sum of respective items. No items are reverse scored.

Scale Name (Abbr.)	Description	Item loadings
Social (SOC)	Social motives for alcohol use	1, 4, 7, 10, 13
Coping (COP)	Coping motives for alcohol use	2, 5, 8, 11, 14
Enhancement (ENH)	Enhancement motives for alcohol use	3, 6, 9, 12, 15

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Resource Files

• Questionnaire
• CIDA Item file
• CIDA Scoring file
• SPSS Scoring Syntax file

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DMQ References

• Cooper, M. L., Russell, M., Skinner, J. B., & Windle, M. (1992). Development and validation of a three-dimensional measure of drinking motives. Psychological Assessment, 4(2), 123-132.

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Created by Jacky Diaz

 Updated on 3-8-02