Employee exposure to coworker substance use and negative consequences: The moderating effects of work group membership

The current study assesses: (I) whether the relationship between individual exposure to coworker substance use and negative consequences resulting from exposure depends on work group membership, and (2) whether group-level characteristics moderate the relationship between exposure and consequences. At the group-level we assessed occupations involving safety risk or high mobility and social factors of drinking climate and group cohesiveness. We conducted Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) across two samples of municipal employees (ns = 650, 878; n of groups = 50, 49). Our results revealed that groups with higher proportions of jobs involving risk (e.g., machine work) and, to a lesser extent, groups with a higher level of drinking climate were those most vulnerable to consequences under conditions of exposure. Importantly, our findings controlled for individual risk factors (e.g., personal drinking, job stress). Our discussion examines the implications of this study for theory and policy related to workplace substance abuse.