Survey Results

Here are the results of the survey that was handed out to 26 of our friends. They ranged in age from 17 yrs of old to 26 yrs of old. Their ethnic backgrounds varied greatly from Middle Eastern to Chinese to Latin American and Caucasian. The Participants were also of a wide religious background ranging from Roman Catholic to Muslim to Atheist.

Of those surveyed, the majority was under the age of twenty-one. The majority of the people also drink regardless of age. We defined “drinking” as people who consumed at least one alcoholic beverage a month. Our results show that gender was not a big factor to those who drink or not. Being a part of a social organization also was not a huge factor however there was slight majority that was whether it was greek (such as a fraternity or sorority), a career related organization, or a social organization.

Not only from those we surveyed, but also based on national studies of college drinking, underage drinking in college is the social norm and is widely accepted. We found in a study conducted by the Century Council, “an overwhelming majority of college students feel drinking is a central part of the social life of both fraternities and sororities (79 percent and 72 percent, respectively. Specifically, Greek-involved students feel drinking is a central part of the social life in fraternities (88 percent) and sororities (78 percent).” More research conducted by Dr. Henry Wechsler, author of Dying to Drink, found that, “student athletes are more often the heaviest drinkers in the overall student population. Half of college athletes (57 percent of men and 48 percent of women) are binge drinkers.” Our statistics were based on the limited number of surveys we conducted but it is evident that when comparing on a national level, college students that are in a fraternity, sorority or are athletes drink in higher percentages. On the national level, in a study conducted by the National Association on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, we found that males are more likely to drink in a large quantity in the same amount of time.