Heavy Episodic Drinking Research Paper

Addictive Behaviors This study, “Heavy Episodic Drinking and its Consequences: The Protective Effects of Same-Sex, Residential Living-Learning Communities for Undergraduate Women” aims to find the impact the environment has on drinking and alcohol abuse. The areas of comparison are single-sex resident living communities, mixed sex residential learning communities, single sex non residential learning communities, and mixed non residential learning communities. This study can possible lead to a solution to underage drinking in colleges, if it is valid and significant. If it does not lead to a solution, it can still provide insight as to the overwhelming number of underage college students who drink. This underage drinking is leading to many

The dependent variable (or responding variable) is the amount of drinking that occurs. This is going to differ from person to person, and is what measures the independent variable. The official hypothesis of the researches is as follows:

“Among female first year undergraduates living in university sponsored housing: 1) Does alcohol consumption vary as a function of RLC [residential learning community] status…2) Does alcohol consumption vary as a function of the sex of floor residents…3) Do the primary and secondary consequences of heavy episodic drinking, including being taken advantage of sexually, vary as a function of RLC status and sex of floor residents.”1

This is the official description of what the researchers are trying to solve, and the main questions they want

The first of these was the maximum number of drinks the students had consumed in 2 hours, throughout the past 28 days. The second question was how often during the the past 28 days the participants had engaged in heavy episodic drinking. This is defined as five drinks consecutively for men, and four drinks for women. The third main question contained multiple smaller ones, asking how many times, in the past 28 days, the participant had blacked out, vomited, been hungover, been nauseated, missed class, been injured, been in an argument, had trouble with police, or had someone say they should cut down on their drinking. The fourth question was similar to the third, asking how often they had experienced secondary consequences (the third question was deemed primary consequences). Secondary consequences include having an “event spoiled, study disrupted, sleep disrupted, property stolen or damaged, took care of someone, found vomit, sexually assaulted, physically assaulted, [or] unwanted sexual advance.”2 Each item (for both primary and secondary consequences) was a yes or no question, a yes being worth one point and a no being worth two points. All of the answers were then added up and compared. The results of this experiment were mixed. Some tests came back statistically significant, while other did not. They did, however, lack many important aspects of the statistical analysis. The statistics were merely provided and not explained,