Alcohol use, alcohol expectancies, and evaluations of expectancies in intimate partner violence in a Hispanic population

Research indicates the Hispanic population experiences higher rates of intimate partner violence (IPV) compared to whites. Alcohol use and acculturative stress are considered to be important contributing factors for IPV among Hispanic individuals. However, no consensus exists to explain the relation between IPV and acculturative stress, with some studies suggesting low acculturative stress leads to higher rates of IPV and others suggesting high acculturative stress leads to higher rates of IPV. These discrepant findings may be explained by measures used to assess acculturative stress. The current study utilized two measures of acculturative stress (ARSMA-II and MASI) to test whether acculturative stress moderated the relation between alcohol use and IPV consistently across measures. 427 participants, mean age 21.14 years (SD = 4.87) identifying as Hispanic/Latinx were recruited from a large public university to participate in the study. Binomial logistic regression was used to examine the effect of heavy drinking, alcohol expectancies, and acculturative stress on IPV. Among females, one of the 10 interactions between measures of acculturative stress and heavy drinking was significant. Acculturative stress was found to moderate the relation between alcohol use and IPV in regard to Anglo orientation (β = 0.18, SE = 0.06). However, given this was the only significant moderation out of 20 models analyzing the potential moderating effects of acculturative stress, the results should be interpreted with caution.