Two news releases came across my EurekAlert feeds containing findings that I'm shocked-- shocked!-- to learn about. The first delivers the startling news that "A high percentage of young males appear willing to purchase alcohol for underage youth." They conducted a "shoulder tapping" study, in which young-looking students approached strangers outside liquor stores, and asked them to buy booze. Eight percent of the general population agreed, compared to nineteen percent of "casually dressed [males] entering the store alone who appeared to be 21 to 30 years old."
You might question whether 19% really counts as a "high percentage," but there's no arguing that it's a big difference. Of course, given that four of the five students doing the "shoulder tapping" were female, I'm surprised the percentage wasn't higher...
The other study, also from the July issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, finds that students who have early morning classes on Fridays are less likely to drink a lot on Thursday nights:
"We found significant relationships between the presence and timing of Friday classes and Thursday drinking," said Wood. "About half of the students with late or no Friday classes consumed at least one drink on Thursday, but only a third of students did so if they had Friday classes which met at 10 a.m. or earlier. Approximately two-thirds of students who consumed some alcohol Thursday consumed a 'binge amount' if they had late or no Friday classes. The Friday-class effect was more pronounced for populations which we know to be at risk for higher levels of alcohol consumption: men, and members of or frequent participants in Greek activities. We also found strong evidence that Thursday, in addition to Friday and Saturday, is associated with high prevalence and levels of alcohol consumption across all four years of college."
Stay tuned for next month's thrilling installment, in which it will be revealed that students who drink a lot on Thursday nights have very poor attendance records at early Friday classes.
(I would sort of hope that they would control for general drinking level-- that is, comparing the Friday and Saturday alcohol intake of the students who did or didn't drink on Thursdays. I wouldn't be surprised if the students who have early Friday classes just don't drink as much in general. It's a chicken-and-egg thing-- are they drinking less because of the classes, or are they willing to take early Friday classes because they don't drink as much?)
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are they drinking less because of the classes, or are they willing to take early Friday classes because they don't drink as much?
It would be difficult to control for class availability, I would think. I know I sometimes scheduled classes for bad times because the class was required, and that was the only time it was offered. My actual attendance varied....
Also, consider students' majors. I was a math major. I had 8AM Friday classes nearly every semester of my college career. Classes were too small to skip. But Thursday was all-you-can-drink night at the local bar, so I learned to go to class hungover.
My girlfriend at the time was an education major, and that entire department didn't have class on Fridays. But she didn't really drink.
So, you can wonder if the math department had class Friday to hold student drinking in check, or if the education department didn't have class Friday because ed majors didn't drink much, or any number of other things.
And I second the point on class availability. Often there was a graduation requirement only offered first thing MWF every other semester. So you took it when you could get it.
Thanks for noticing the article. Actually, the article that we wrote looked at the drinking patterns of folks in semesters when they did and didn't have a Friday class and found the effect of Friday classes is about the same as in the general population.
We also looked at the total amount of alcohol consumed in the week and found that the friday class effect was associated with an overall lower level of weekly consumption as well (i.e., they weren't going out and doing "catch-up" drinking).
Other folks are definitely right about the class availability issue- freshmen don't have the options upperclassmen do when it comes to freedom of schedule. All I can say there is that we tested folks every semester for four years and found the pattern stable. There was a big jump when people were of legal age, of course.