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November 12, 2011 12:00 PM
He Was So Wasted
A new study finds the college students exaggerate the amount their friends drink when they discuss it.
According to new research by Clayton Neighbors, a professor at the University of Houston:
College students drink more alcohol than any other segment in the population, leading at times to negative consequences from missing class, risky sexual behavior, depression, driving under the influence, trouble with authorities, injuries and even fatalities. We have established in previous research studies that students overestimate drinking by their peers, and that influences their own drinking. If you can change those perceptions, you can change their drinking.
This matters because if students think their friends are drinking more, they will consume more to try and keep up to their peers’ (fictional) drinking prowess.
Or something. Neighbors also said that “most students actually drink no more than three or four drinks per week, but most students think their peers are drinking much more.”
But then, if most students drink no more than three or four drinks a week, who cares about the exaggeration? Three or four doesn’t sound like a problem at all.
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POed Lib on November 12, 2011 4:18 PM:
This is an issue where the simple average is not an appropriate measure. A certain proportion of college students (like my son and daughter) do not drink. Thus, if they are averaged in, the average is incorrectly low. If you have 10 people who drink 8 drinks a week, and 10 who do not drink, the average is 4/week. Looks low, actually incorrect.
Buck Turgidson on November 13, 2011 8:51 PM:
Neighbors's conclusions make no sense at all. It could only make sense if the whole goal of college-student drinking is to outdrink each other. While drinking games do exist, their goal usually is the opposite--to induce the drunkenness in the other before succumbing yourself. Of course, this does not preclude getting completely shitfaced following the "win". I also agree with POed Lib--simple average tells us nothing. The distribution, as is usually the case with drinking, is bimodal--some drink little while others binge. Sociologists are sometimes like conservatives--they think every question has a simple answer.