A measure of expectancies for alcohol analgesia: Preliminary factor analysis, reliability, and validity

•Expectancies for alcohol analgesia may influence pain-alcohol interrelations.•The EAA is a novel 5-item measure of expectancies that alcohol will reduce pain.•The EAA evinced a single-factor structure and evidence of reliability/validity.•Future work should include further validation and tests of predictive utility. Rates of alcohol consumption are substantially higher among persons with pain, and recent research has focused on elucidating bidirectional pain-alcohol effects. Expectancies for alcohol analgesia could influence the degree to which alcohol confers acute pain-relieving effects, and may amplify the propensity to respond to pain with drinking behavior. However, no validated measures of expectancies for alcohol analgesia are available. Therefore, we developed a five-item measure of Expectancies for Alcohol Analgesia (EAA), which assesses the perceived likelihood that alcohol will reduce pain. The goal of this project was to examine psychometric properties of the EAA among a sample of 273 current alcohol users with chronic pain (Mage = 32.9; 34% female) who completed an online survey of pain and substance use. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) results indicated that the hypothesized single-factor structure of the EAA provided good model fit (Bollen-Stine bootstrap p = .13). The EAA also showed excellent internal consistency (α = 0.97), and scores were positively associated with quantity/frequency of alcohol use, alcohol outcome expectancies, coping-related drinking motives, and pain severity (ps