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Individual Drinking Norms

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Submitted By cgarvin10
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This study tests the effects of social norms and Perceived Social Support (PSS) on the consumption of alcohol. Because of earlier discoveries, this paper attempts to study the correlation between the level of social support from a participant’s social group and the drinking norms as a base for their drinking. The paper hypothesized that those that had low levels of social support from friend groups would be more willing to follow drinking norms and that those with a higher level of social support would be less likely to follow drinking norms. There were 574 college students, both men and women with an average age of 18.77. Each completed a measure of their social support level and what peer alcohol norms were. The participants were to keep a diary of their drinking habits everyday and used it to figure out each person’s drinking frequency and quantity. The hypothesis was proven and the individuals with lower social support were more likely to fall into the norms of drinking. However, there wasn’t a correlation between high social support and drinking norm behavior. In conclusion, if a social group is supportive the less pressure one feels to fall into the path of the norm. Within this article one strength was having the participants record each the drinking of each participant was measured by day. Not allowing any time to pass within each diary entry allows for a more consistent result as well as more confidence in that what the participants are keeping track of is more accurate. However, a weakness of this article occurs when the behavior of the individuals participating is not monitored. Allowing the students to record their own drinking behavior may allow for skewed results. Keeping track of how many drinks a person has can sometimes be based off of guessing instead of remembering precisely. The same thing can occur when having a mixed drink and

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