Are perceived stress, depressive symptoms and religiosity associated with alcohol consumption? A survey of freshmen university students across five European countries

Table 1 Description of the sample across participating sites

	Bielefeld, Germany N = 650	Lublin, Poland N = 554	Sofia, Bulgaria N = 684	Gloucestershire, UK N = 300	Kosice, Slovakia N = 315
Categorical variables
Female (%)	57.8	71.1	68.4	60.3	70.5
High frequency of drinking (%)¹	26.9	12.2	33.6	59.3	15.1
Problem drinking (%)²	17.0	11.8	13.6	22.1	21.2
High importance of faith (religiosity) (%)³	16.2	75.5	15.4	20.7	54.8
Religion (%)
None	12.1	1.0	15.7	― ⁸	21.0
Christian
Catholic	25.7	83.8	0.8	― ⁸	67.2
Protestant	35.7	0.0	1.3	― ⁸	5.0
Orthodox	1.0	0.2	35.5	― ⁸	1.8
Unspecified⁴	17.7	11.2	41.0	― ⁸	―
Other (non-Christian)	2.6	0.5	2.4	― ⁸	2.7
Missing	5.2	3.4	3.2	― ⁸	2.2
Score variables
Subjective sufficiency of income [mean (SD)]⁵	2.34 (0.86)	2.46 (0.86)	2.60 (0.80)	2.54 (0.86)	2.29 (0.90)
Depressive symptoms [mean (SD)]⁵	26.84 (15.23)	31.84 (17.11)	32.60 (14.98)	23.03 (15.21)	28.70 (15.42)
Cohen’s perceived stress score [mean (SD)]⁷	8.05 (1.69)	8.04 (1.85)	8.24 (2.07)	6.76 (2.31)	9.00 (2.09)

¹ Drinking a few times each week and more.
² ≥2 positive answers in CAGE.
³ “My religion is very important for my life” (1 = “strongly disagree”, 5 = “strongly agree”. High importance of religious faith (religiosity) = values 4 and 5.
⁴ Students in Germany, Poland and Bulgaria could first choose the religion and in an additional question specify the denomination. The unspecified group includes those who chose Christianity, but did not specify the Christian denomination. Probably, these students also belong to the denomination of the local majority. A similar two-step description of religion was asked for Islam, but due to low numbers, the results are not reported separately. In Slovakia there was a single question which asked about the three major Christian denominations, other religions and none.
⁵ “How sufficient is your income?” (1 = “totally sufficient”, 4 = “not sufficient at all”). Larger numbers indicate that income was more often perceived as insufficient.
⁶ Sum of 20 items scored from 0 to 5. Maximum of 100 indicates strongest depressive symptoms.
⁷ Sum of four items scored from 0 to 4. Maximum of 16 indicates highest perceived stress.
⁸ Due to a coding error for the Anglican Church, the UK data on religion could not be analysed.

ISSN: 1747-597X