Perceptions and practices of student binge drinking: an observational study of residential college students.

Professionals have debated the use of the term binge drinking over the past couple of decades, yet little attention has been paid to college student perceptions. We explored how students at one university qualitatively defined binge drinking; whether their own definitions coincided with those adopted by researchers; and whether students' own definitions varied according to their behavior. The most common definition provided by students included a description of the consumption of a large, non-specific, amount of alcohol. Only half of the students who, by standard definition, participated in binge drinking in the previous 30 days actually identified their behavior as such. Finally, binge drinkers were more likely to define binge drinking in an extreme manner such that it results in vomiting or blacking out.