Drinking Habits of Freshmen
17.871 Group Project
Question
When freshmen live off campus, do
they drink more than when they live
on campus?
Why is this important?

Influence University policy/government
laws & regulations

Impacts student life on college campuses

At MIT: all freshmen must live on campus!
Alternate Explanations

Past experience: High School & Parent’s
Drinking Habits

Living Environment: Substance freehousing, single sex housing, roommates
Background
Henry Wechsler: Principal Researcher, Harvard
School of Public Health
College Alcohol Studies (CAS) every 3-4
years
 1993 study prompted examination of
heavy-episodic “binge” drinking.
 90s: alcohol abuse classified #1 public
health problem facing college students by
Surgeon General and CDC

Statistics

1 in 3 college students use of alcohol
qualified for formal diagnosis of alcohol
abuse

Continued attempts in 1990sLittle
change

Efforts aimed at educational aspects; no
environmental changes (thought to be
major cause of alcohol issues)
Method: Data

Random sample

Relevant variablesSTATA datasets to
analyze

Recoded and dummy variables created for
comparison across datasets
Method: Answering the Question

Variables “on” and “off” for freshmen place
of residence

Measure for total drinks consumed in a 30day period: (total drinks= drinking
occasions x drinks per occasion)

Compared percentage of on-campus
freshmen who drank to the percentage of
total alcohol those on-campus freshmen
drank
Survey Questions

How many occasions in the last 30 days
have you had a drink?

How many drinks, on average, did you
drink each time?

Combining the questions (problematic)
The data we have: total_drinks
histogram
On Campus
Mean= ~43
SD= ~68
Off Campus
Mean= ~34
SD= ~72
Occasions
Mean (occasions/past 30 days):
7.29
6.41
On Campus
Off Campus
Mean (average drinks/occasion):
4.95
4.30
Number of drinks
Occasions
Mean (occasions/past 30 days):
7.09
7.07
Alcohol allowed in student’s housing
No alcohol allowed
Mean (average drinks/occasion):
4.75
4.94
Number of drinks
Occasions
Mean (occasions/past 30 days):
6.67
9.45
Non-Greek
Greek
Mean (average drinks/occasion):
4.68
5.47
Number of drinks
Method: Rival Explanations

For Greek membership & alcohol-free housing,
we repeated the same analysis procedure:
Generated binary dataset for (X, not X);
X=possible explanatory variable
Created table of (X, not X) total drinks
consumed in the past 30 days
Compared percentage of respondents who were
X with percentage of total alcohol drunk by
respondents who were X
Who consumes the alcohol?
Percent
respondents
Percent total
drinks
On
77.40
80.83
Off
22.60
19.17
Alcohol-free
70.29
69.37
Alcohol allowed
29.71
30.63
Non-Greek
85.10
78.69
Greek
14.90
21.31
Difference
- 3.43
- 0.92
- 6.40
Total alcohol consumed by the students surveyed in 30 days previous to
survey:
3951 respondents drank 163,058 drinks (average 41 drinks/person)
*Note: Among those who drank/answered both questions
Results…
As far as we can tell, when freshmen live
on campus, they are no less thirsty than
those who live off campus.
 This is true when we look at number of
times they drink…
 And number of drinks they have on each
occasion.

But…

There may be unavoidable shortcomings,
either in our methodology, or in the data.
•Do we look at total drinks?
•Or do we look at measures of drunkenness?
• We chose to attempt to quantify the number.
• This assumes an even distribution of sex…
• And a normal distribution of weights.
I said hey…what’s going on?



Perhaps people who
drank in high school
drink more in
college.
Engineering
students may drink
more because of
chronic depression.
Students at easy
schools drink more.

Data for high
school drinking
was lost…
Data for majors
was not taken
across all
surveys…
 Schools were not
identified.

So why should schools care?



Measures to force
freshmen to live on
campus may not be as
productive…
Providing substance free
housing may be a
waste…
Because the most
significant finding we had
was…
Further thought and research…

We have identified several distinct
categories of drinkers which may be of
interest to college policymakers.

Greek/Non-Greek histogram

A measure of what constitutes harmful
behavior needs to be determined.
 Is
binge drinking frequently the problem?
 Is binge drinking infrequently the problem?
 Are Greek organizations really to blame?
Questions?
Occasions
Non-Greek
Greek
Number of drinks