Scientists say women confuse the effects of excessive drinking with being drugged.

Young women who fear their drinks have been spiked on a night out have often just consumed too much alcohol, academics have said.

Researchers from the University of Kent found the students mistakenly linked sickness, blackouts and dizziness to poisoning by a stranger - when it was likely to be caused by excessive alcohol consumption.

They also found evidence of "active denial" that it was drinking too much that left students "incoherent and incapacitated".

Dr Adam Burgess from the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research said: "Young women appear to be displacing their anxieties about the consequences of consuming what is in the bottle on to rumours of what could be put there by someone else.

"The reason why fear of drink-spiking has become widespread seems to be a mix of it being more convenient to guard against than the effects of alcohol itself and the fact that such stories are exotic - like a more adult version of 'stranger danger'."

Worryingly, the rise of the "urban myth" around the prevalence of date rape drugs leads young women to underestimate other risks, according to the study.

Drink tampering was rated as a more significant factor in sexual assault than walking home alone at night, drug taking or being drunk.

The study, published in the British Journal of Criminology, found three quarters of students identified drink-spiking as an important risk - more than alcohol or drugs.

More than half said they knew someone who had had drugs slipped into their drink.

But despite popular beliefs, police have found no evidence rape victims are commonly drugged with substances such as rohypnol, the researchers said.