Interesting Study

[moe.ron]

[afanewsclips] Fraternity Drinkers Can Say 'No' to Alcohol
Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 10:09:46 -0800


ABCNEWS.com
March 12, 2001

Frat Drinkers Can Say 'No' to Alcohol

- Fraternity brothers and sorority sisters drink more than other
students - but only while in college, a new study finds.

"This is an important study because for the first time it shows
directly how important the perception of peer support is in these
groups and that the behavior changes after college when presumably
the peer support ends," says Bruce D. Bartholow, assistant professor
of psychology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, an
author on the study.

"Previously, some people have believed that students were in
fraternities and sororities drank heavily because that's the kind of
personality they have."

Bartholow and colleagues compared the drinking behavior of 319
continuously enrolled "Greek" students and other college students
enrolled at the University of Missouri.

They assessed their drinking habits during their four years of
college and again, three years after graduation.

The study is published in the March issue of journal Psychology of
Addictive Behaviors.

Experts, though, questioned the short-term nature of the study's
findings and said college-age drinking leads to risky sexual
behavior, aggression, driving dangers and other problems.

'Greeks' Drink More, But Stop

Members of the Greek letter organizations drank three times as much
than non-members during college years, the investigators found.

But three years later the drinking behavior of the two groups, on
average, was the same, they found.

Bartholow attributes the change in the Greeks to the different
environments they find themselves in during and after college.

"What is socially acceptable in college is not the norm afterwards,"
Bartholow says. "Removing them from the college and putting them at
work or in marriage changes their behavior."

Commenting on the study, Henry Wechsler, principal investigator of
another alcohol study at the Harvard School of Public Health that has
analyzed trends in college drinking since 1993, challenged the focus
on just three years after college.

"Alcohol problems are a lifetime issue," Wechsler says. "People will
start and stop drinking throughout their life and an early experience
might have helped spur them on."

Focus Should Be On Intervention

He also called for attention on the harm college-age drinking does do.

"The issue is not whether it continues or not, but what to do at the
time the drinking occurs," Wechsler says. "What is the effect that
drinking has on the educational experience of the students in the
Greek houses and the other students?"

Besides hurting themselves, Wechsler says Greek drinking hurts the
quality of life of other students through late-night disturbances,
fights and unwanted sexual advances.

Wechsler also questions the small size of the study and whether the
findings are generalizable. In his study of more than 13,000 students
in more than 140 colleges, he found heavy drinkers were more likely
to join fraternities.

Bartholow does not dispute the need for intervention during college.
He says his research supports targeting peer-based interventions to
stop the excessive drinking, as well as involving the community, such
as bars and the college administration in helping to change college
student perceptions about what is normal.

"We need to direct more efforts to get to the source of the beliefs
that excessive college drinking is the norm," Bartholow says. "It
doesn't have to be the norm."

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