THE “PARTY SCHOOL” FACTOR: HOW MESSAGES ABOUT ALCOHOL USE
AT UNIVERSITIES INFLUENCE PROSPECTIVE STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS
Thesis
Submitted to
The College of Arts and Sciences of the
UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for
The Degree of
Master of Arts in Communication
By
Jessica Lynn Parker
Dayton, OH
May 2009
THE “PARTY SCHOOL” FACTOR: HOW MESSAGES ABOUT ALCOHOL USE
AT UNIVERSITIES INFLUENCE PROSPECTIVE STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS
APPROVED BY:
______Teresa L. Thompson, Ph.D. Faculty Advisor
______James D. Robinson, Ph.D. Faculty Reader
______Thomas O. Farnsworth, S.M., Psy.D., R.A.S. Faculty Reader
ii
ABSTRACT
THE “PARTY SCHOOL” FACTOR: HOW MESSAGES ABOUT ALCOHOL USE
AT UNIVERSITIES INFLUENCE PROSPECTIVE STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS
Name: Parker, Jessica Lynn University of Dayton
Advisor: Dr. Teresa L. Thompson
This three-phase study was designed to determine what messages
prospective students receive about alcohol use and partying at a university, how
these messages affect who is most attracted to the university, and whether
different types of university messages attract students with different
characteristics. Interviews with first-year students at the University of Dayton
(UD) revealed that most students heard messages about alcohol use and
partying before deciding to attend. A survey of UD undergraduate students,
which asked for retrospective reflection on their experiences as prospective
students, found a significant correlation between having a positive view of UD
after hearing these messages and being party- and alcohol-oriented, as measured by factors such as viewing partying as important, having the intention to drink alcohol in college, and having previous experiences of drinking to intoxication. A survey of high school students showed that a hypothetical university with many weekend activities and strong enforcement of drinking age
iii laws is most attractive to prospective students. A “party school” and a school with many activities but little law enforcement both attracted primarily party- and alcohol-oriented high school students, whereas a school with many activities and strong enforcement was attractive to all types of students. Post-secondary schools with “party school” reputations are encouraged to focus on weekend activity promotion and enforcement of alcohol laws to avoid continually attracting a concentration of heavy drinkers.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I owe immeasurable thanks to Dr. Teri Thompson, my advisor, who provided both academic and moral support through all three phases of my research. It was a rare and wonderful blessing to have an advisor willing to fully support all my ideas and to answer my questions at any time of day or night.
Additional thanks are necessary for the other members of my thesis
committee, Dr. Robinson and Brother Tom, who together ensured that everything
I did was both theoretically sound and practically applicable. Scott Markland also
contributed a great deal to the success of my research with his knowledge, advice, and support. Finally, I sincerely appreciate the support of my fiancé and
my parents, who patiently listened to me talk about my project for hours on end
and who gave me some great ideas.
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT ...... iii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ...... viii
LIST OF TABLES ...... ix
CHAPTER 1 ...... 1
INTRODUCTION ...... 1
REVIEW OF LITERATURE ...... 3
College Student Alcohol Consumption ...... 3
Symbolic Interactionism ...... 5
College Choice ...... 11
CHAPTER 2 ...... 17
STUDY 1 ...... 17
Methods ...... 17
Results ...... 20
Discussion ...... 29
CHAPTER 3 ...... 34
STUDY 2 ...... 34
Methods ...... 34
Results ...... 38
vi
Discussion ...... 51
CHAPTER 4 ...... 57
STUDY 3 ...... 57
Methods ...... 57
Results ...... 61
Discussion ...... 78
CONCLUSION ...... 82
APPENDIX A: Study 1 Interview Guide ...... 90
APPENDIX B: Study 2 Survey ...... 96
APPENDIX C: Study 3 Survey ...... 102
vii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
1. University Description and Pre-Existing Attitudes’ Effect on University
Attraction………………………………………………………………………………..67
viii
LIST OF TABLES
1. Frequency of Messages Received by Prospective UD Students……………...39
2. A 5 x 3 Cross-Tabulation of Year in School and Having Received the Message “The Police Do Not Prevent Underage Drinking at UD”…………………………...41
3. Perception of UD after Hearing Each Message Correlated with Pre-Existing Attitudes, Pre-Existing Behaviors and Average Number of Drinks……………….42
4. Pre-Existing Attitudes Correlated with Perception of UD after Hearing Each Message, Controlling for Pre-Existing Behaviors…………………………………..44
5. PEAI & PEBI as Predictors of Perception of UD after Receiving Each Message Compared to PEAI Alone as a Predictor……………………………………………46
6. Independent Samples t-test of Low Drinkers vs. High Drinkers on Perceptions of UD after Receiving Each Message……………………………………………….48
7. Independent Samples t-test of University Housing Resident vs. Commuter on Perceptions of UD after Receiving Each Message………………………………...50
8. Athletic Involvement Correlated with Alcohol Attitudes…………………………63
9. Mean Attraction to Each Hypothetical University………………………………..64
10. One-Way ANOVA of University Description on Measures of Attraction…….65
11. One-Way ANOVA of Differences in University Attraction by PEAI Score (Low, Medium, or High Score) for Each University Description………………………….69
12. Correlations of Attraction to Party School with Attitudes Toward Alcohol Use and Partying……………………………………………………………………………72
13. Correlations of Attraction to Many Activities/Little Enforcement School with Attitudes Toward Alcohol Use and Partying...………………………………………73
14. Correlations of Attraction to Many Activities/Strong Enforcement School with Attitudes Toward Alcohol Use and Partying…………………………...……………74
15. Correlations of Attraction to Dry Campus with Attitudes Toward Alcohol Use and Partying……………………………………………………………………………75
ix
16. Mean Attraction Scores Controlling for Social Influence……………………...77
x
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
“I wouldn’t lie to them and say it’s not a party school, because it is, and I think that’s quite evident when you come here and . . . I think it’s evident before you come here.”
-- University of Dayton student on how she would describe UD to a prospective student
When college-bound high school seniors are making the decision about which college to attend, they may consider a variety of factors: tuition, campus atmosphere, faculty/student ratio, distance from home, and so on. A student may consider multiple factors when narrowing the pool of schools or making his or her final decision. One potential factor that has rarely been examined, however, is a school’s reputation — not for academic quality, but for having good parties and
an abundance of free alcohol. Does a “party school” image attract certain
students, and if so, does it attract the type of students a university wants? This
three-part study was designed to help universities determine whether a school’s
party reputation may attract students who have behaviors and attitudes inconsistent with the university’s goals.
1
Before determining the possible effects of such a reputation, it is first
necessary to establish that such a reputation exists and pinpoint from where
prospective students may receive messages purporting such a reputation. The
first phase of this study sought to identify what messages prospective students
received about the University of Dayton (UD) related to partying and alcohol use,
and from where these messages were received. This phase then laid the
groundwork for a look at what effects these messages may have had on a
student’s decision whether to attend UD and whether heavy-drinking high school students were most positively influenced by these messages. Finally, a third phase determined whether different university messages would each attract students with different goals surrounding partying and alcohol use.
2
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
College Student Alcohol Consumption
Alcohol consumption is something to which colleges and universities are no strangers. A nationwide survey of college students found that 85% drink alcohol, and 44% of all students binge drink, which was defined as consumption of five or more drinks in a row for men and four or more drinks in a row for women (Facing up to our campus drinking problem, 1997; binge drinking definition from Wechsler, Dowdall, Davenport & Rimm, 1995). There are negative consequences of such widespread use of alcohol for both the students who drink and the campus on which they drink, ranging from injury and unsafe sex to vandalism and property damage (Task Force of the National Advisory Council on
Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 2002). Campaigns to reduce heavy drinking among college students, whether nationwide (DeJong, 2002) or campus-specific
(Syre, 1999), typically focus on reducing drinking among students who are already attending college.
Many students, however, begin drinking in high school or before. The
University of Dayton’s director of admission, Robert Durkle, noted in a New York
Times article that students often come to college with experience drinking alcohol
(Pappano, 2007). Alcohol use in high school can predict college drinking in general (Facing up to our campus drinking problem, 1997; Yu & Shacket, 2001),
3 and high school binge drinking is strongly correlated with college binge drinking
(Wechsler, Dowdall, Davenport & Castillo, 1995).
When these heavy-drinking high school students, who will likely remain heavy drinkers in college, are looking at which college to attend, what are they looking for? There are some clues to the answer to this question in the values of those who drink in college. Wechsler, Dowdall, Davenport & Castillo (1995) found that viewing partying in college as important was correlated to binge drinking in college. Two years later, the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol
Study confirmed that after residence in a fraternity or sorority, the biggest predictor of binge drinking among college students is believing that parties are important (Facing up to our campus drinking problem, 1997). If these heavy drinkers place importance on partying, it follows that they may look for a university that allows them to continue this lifestyle, even if it’s not the sole factor in their decision.
Given that binge drinkers believe partying is important, it is no surprise that they are more likely to characterize their school as a “party school” than those who drink less frequently. A study that asked students at two Texas universities whether their school was a party school found that students who reporting partying more frequently were more likely to believe that they attended a party school (Burnett, 2006). Reifman and Watson’s (2003) study of Texas
Tech students in their first semester found a significant correlation (r=.172, p=.005) between the view of Texas Tech as a party school and reported binge drinking in college; additionally, there was a near-significant correlation (r=.113,
4
p=.063) between viewing Texas Tech as a party school and reported binge
drinking in high school (A. Reifman, personal communication, September 5,
2007). This supports the possibility that heavy-drinking high school students
place emphasis on a college’s party reputation.
These studies, however, leave several questions unanswered. When high school students are choosing colleges, do they know which schools have party reputations? If so, from where did they acquire this information, and how detailed are the messages they receive about what it means that a particular college is a
party school? Most importantly, does this information have any effect on their
decision of where to attend college? And if so, can colleges change or compete
with these messages to attract a different set of students with safer behaviors?
The importance of identifying and understanding the effects of these
messages can be seen more clearly through a theoretical framework that
explains how and why these messages may affect students’ perception of a
university.
Symbolic Interactionism
The theory of symbolic interactionism is helpful for explaining what role
these messages may play in the decision-making process of prospective
students. Based on the teachings of University of Chicago professor George
Herbert Mead, the theory’s main ideas were summarized in a book compiled by
Mead’s students after his death in which student Herbert Blumer coined the term
“symbolic interactionism” (Blumer, 1969). This is a broad term encompassing
5 many different versions of the same theory, united by common beliefs: simply stated, that one’s ideas of self and of society are only made real through interaction, and that these ideas are essential to understanding interaction
(Stryker, 1980).
Symbolic interactionism stresses that humans are not machines reacting to stimuli; rather, each person has multiple perspectives that guide his or her choices, and it is not enough to observe someone’s behavior to understand the reasons behind it (Charon, 1979). By approaching students through interviews, the first phase of the present study resists making generalizations about the students who choose to attend a university and instead lets them explain their reasons for this choice in their own terms.
Blumer (1969) summarizes three main premises of symbolic interactionism in his own book. Humans, he says, “act toward things on the basis of the meanings that the things have for them.” Additionally, “the meaning of such things is derived from, or arises out of, the social interaction that one has with one’s fellows.” Finally, “these meanings are handled in, and modified through, an interpretive process used by the person in dealing with the things he encounters”
(all p. 2). Each of these premises is valuable to apply to the problem at hand to better understand the role that messages about a university play when a prospective student is making his or her college choice decision, and consequently why it is so important to identify the messages related to alcohol use and partying.
6
The first premise argues that humans act toward things based on the
meanings they give these things. To apply this to the study at hand, this means
that when a prospective student chooses to apply to a university and eventually
to attend this university, these actions are based on the meaning that student has ascribed to the university. Blumer (1969) says this premise is deceptively simple
and thus is typically not given adequate attention when examining real situations.
In most cases, “meaning is either taken for granted and thus pushed aside as
unimportant or it is regarded as a mere neutral link between the factors
responsible for human behavior and this behavior as the product of such factors”
(Blumer, 1969, p. 2). It seems that the latter has been the case for most previous
studies on college choice, which have sought to pinpoint which factors influence
a student’s decision to attend a university, without determining the student’s
ultimate view of the school in which all these factors culminate.
If the second case applies to college choice literature, the first is likely to
apply to university officials themselves. That is, members of a university may
construct an image for the school (such as a “community,” in the case of UD) and
believe that students are attracted to the image the school has put forth, that the
only meaning the university has is the one it builds for itself. Symbolic
interactionism reminds us that what a university is (or “means”) is not inherent to
the institution. Different students may ascribe different meanings to the
university, whether it be a “community” or a “party school.” This echoes the
caution of Litten and Hall (1989) that regardless of what universities believe
7 should be the benchmarks of quality, students and parents will make decisions based on their own beliefs about quality.
Blumer’s second premise addresses how a person arrives at the meanings he or she ascribes to an object. Just as the object itself has no inherent meaning, the person approaching the object will not define it based solely on his or her own feelings or knowledge, but on the meaning he or she has developed for the object through interactions with others (Blumer, 1969). As
Charon (1979) explains it, “We act not toward a world out there but rather toward a world defined by others through symbolic communication” (p. 54). An individual will arrive at a meaning for the object through hearing others talk about it or observing how others act toward it.
This premise has implications for the study at hand. Students who define a university, at least in part, as a “party school,” are not likely to arrive at this meaning on their own. This meaning will be shaped from the messages a student hears about the university while interacting with others. It may also be based on an individual’s observations of how others act at the university. By determining the sources of messages students receive about alcohol use and partying at a university, this study will examine whether these two sources (social interactions and observations of others) play a large role in guiding students’ own definitions of the university.
The third premise of symbolic interactionism recognizes the autonomy of the individual in question. While the meaning of an object is constructed from interactions with others, how a person ultimately views and acts toward the
8
object is mediated by his or her own thought process, what Blumer (1969) calls a
“process of interpretation”: “an instance of the person engaging in a process of
communication with himself” (p. 5). Put in terms of this study, two students may
arrive at the meaning of a university as a “party school,” one of whom views the
university very positively as a result of this interpretation, and another who views the university negatively. After determining the primary messages prospective students receive, it will be necessary to see if an individual’s pre-existing attitudes toward partying and pre-existing alcohol use behaviors influence how these messages affect his or her overall view of the university.
Another concept of symbolic interactionism worth mentioning is that of the
“generalized other.” Essentially, this is the idea that each person carries within his or her mind a notion of what most other people generally think and do, and an individual will adjust his or her own actions in some way in response to this generalized other (Blumer, 1969). The concept of the generalized other argues that part of what influences a person’s enrollment decision is what he or she believes about others’ attitudes and behaviors. Put another way, if a person is attracted to a school based on its reputation for partying and alcohol use, this may be because the person believes that most college students engage in these behaviors and thus the individual has a greater desire to do the same. This will be taken into account as part of assessing a student’s pre-existing attitudes. It is also possible that attraction to a party school results from interactions between students that place importance on enrolling in a school that has good parties or
9 accessible alcohol, which will be examined through the interviews that will be conducted as part of this project.
One other point to keep in mind regarding the concept of the generalized other is that every person is engaging in the same process of interpreting and reacting to his or her own beliefs about the generalized other; a person who acts in response to the generalized other has his or her own behaviors interpreted and responded to (Charon, 1979). This speaks to the practical significance of the study at hand and the reason for combating messages that attract heavy-drinking students. If a university is able to attract more moderate drinkers and nondrinkers, these students’ behavior will have an effect on the perceived drinking norms of the entire campus, thus potentially decreasing the amount consumed by all students. This in turn reduces the likelihood of sexual assault, vandalism, student death, and so on. Even a small decrease in the perceived drinking level of the generalized other could have positive practical consequences for the campus community as a whole.
The theory of symbolic interactionism is helpful in understanding the practical significance of identifying the messages prospective students receive about alcohol use and partying at a university. These messages, received
through social interactions, shape the meaning students ultimately ascribe to the
university. Stryker (1980) explains the practical importance of the concepts
discussed within symbolic interactionism with “perhaps the most quoted phrase
in the literature of symbolic interactionism” (p. 2). It comes from W.I. Thomas’
book The Child in America, in which he says, “If men define situations as real,
10 they are real in their consequences” (quoted in Stryker 1980, p. 2). In other words, if students believe, coming in, that a university is a party school, they will make it one through their behaviors. It will be difficult to restrain the party culture at a particular university until students stop defining it as a party school.
College Choice
Though Blumer cautions against examining only the factors that go into a decision without including the individual’s thought process, a review of the literature on college choice factors will show that a school’s reputation for parties has rarely been considered as a possible factor, much less been examined in great detail. Additionally, an overall view of the research indicates that a prospective student’s decision-making process has become increasingly complex over time as options for where and how to attend college expand. Long (2004)
found that while differences in tuition could explain where students chose to go to
school in 1972, this was not enough to explain college choice in the 1990s. She
noted that “college quality” has become more important to students when
choosing a college, though it appears that no definition of quality was provided in
the surveys she examined. Kealy and Rockel (1987) found that while academic
quality, social life atmosphere, and campus location could be considered the
primary areas in which students perceive college quality, “social life is the most
correlated with all of the other latent factors, suggesting that perceptions of how
happy one will be socially color perceptions of other aspects of the institution” (p.
688).
11
What a particular student looks for in a college may be influenced by the characteristics of that student. A nationwide study by a marketing communications firm surveyed high school students about factors influencing their college decisions and came up with six different “personas” of prospective college students (What prospective students want most, 2005). Two of these personae, which seem most salient for the university that is the focus of the present study, are “God and service first” — students who place a high priority on religion and have had service-learning experiences — and “The collegiate experience” — students who are “socially minded” (p. 7) and focus primarily on what there is to do on and off campus. The other personae are “Be more than my parents,” students concerned with job opportunities for graduates; “Nontraditional traditional students,” traditional-age students who commute and work during college; “Image- and reputation-conscious,” students focused on a school’s academic reputation; and “Personal enrichment,” students who want a well-
rounded education in a variety of areas (What prospective students want most,
2005). Because students look for colleges with student bodies they think are
similar to themselves (Paulsen, 1990), it follows that the type of students a
school attracts will be a result of which of these personae is reflected in its
reputation.
Academic records alone do not tell who a student is and what he or she
might be looking for in a college. For example, a study on the college decisions
of high-achieving high school seniors found that, on a scale of 1 to 5 for which 1
was not at all important and 5 was very important, 24% of these students rated
12
“the party scene” as a 5 in their enrollment decision, and another 25% rated it as a 4 (Lipman Hearne, 2006). Though this was only one of many factors that students rated as important, this is one of the first studies to recognize the party scene as having a potential influence on students’ college decisions and to demonstrate that it merits at least some consideration in the college choice decision. It also shows that attracting high-achieving students to a university is by no means a sure guard against creating or perpetuating a heavy-drinking campus culture.
It may not be possible to tell exactly how much influence a particular factor has on a student’s college enrollment decision. People don’t always know or want to admit what influences their college choice decisions (Litten & Hall, 1989).
Though Moogan, Baron and Harris (1999) found that students go through the five stages of consumer buying decisions (problem recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase, post-purchase evaluation), Galotti (1995) warned that both adolescents and adults often don’t make decisions logically.
Her study on college choice replicated an earlier laboratory study showing that when people have a large number of options from which to choose, they don’t use complex processes to make the decision.
James (2001) had this to say:
We found that many prospective students do not rigorously seek information and their information-seeking skills are often modest. As a consequence, university applicants draw on chance encounters and questionable sources when shaping their thoughts about suitable choices. . . . In most cases they accept on faith what they are told and are highly susceptible to the serendipity of word-of-mouth testimony (p. 4).
13
From this follows the possibility that heavy-drinking high school students knowingly or unknowingly retain information they hear about a particular’s school party reputation and are attracted to the school because they believe the students there have values similar to themselves. The implication of this for colleges attempting to change a drinking culture on their campus is that they need first to identify both what messages prospective students are receiving about alcohol use that may be attracting heavy drinkers and the sources of these messages. Secondly, they need to determine what changes can be made to counteract the messages about alcohol use that prospective students are
receiving and what changes need to be made in admissions to screen out
students who are attracted primarily by the school’s party reputation.
Many universities have changed their admissions policies in an attempt to
be ranked higher in newsmagazines such as U.S. News & World Report
(McDonough, Lising, Walpole & Perez, 1998), but efforts to lower their rank in lists such as the Princeton Review’s list of party schools have focused on
changing an already-present drinking culture (Lipka, 2006). However, Paulsen
(1990) argues that colleges who want to change their culture need to recruit students who are different than their current students. Wechsler emphasizes that it is important that colleges realize when they are considered a party school and
take steps to change their image (Facing up to our campus drinking problem,
1997).
One roadblock to making these types of changes is the trend in higher education to maintain the number of incoming students, even if this requires
14 lowering the admissions standards and providing remedial instruction to students after admission (Veysey, 1980). This, however, does not address the root problem. As Lovelock and Rothschild (1980) explain, “In short, educators should patch the holes in the bucket before asking admissions to pump more water into it” (pp. 49-50). Although these descriptions are from 1980, there is evidence that this trend has continued. In a 1997 interview, Wechsler recommended that schools with a party image examine their admissions policies as part of the process to change that image: “Schools are afraid of losing students, but are they really gaining much by getting students who don’t want to do any work and just want to party?” (Facing up to our campus drinking problem, 1997, p. 7).
Some of UD’s admissions policies provide evidence that the UD Office of
Admission is feeling the pressure to maintain enrollment numbers. UD has a program called the Summer Trial Enrollment Program (STEP) for “promising first-
year applications,” which is described as “a summer bridge program that
combines structured academic support and residential programming with the
goal of facilitating transition to the University of Dayton” (Learning Enhancement
and Academic Development, 2007). Perhaps more relevant, regarding drinking
behavior, UD will admit students who have received alcohol violations in high
school but “may put a strike against them” (Pappano, 2007, p. 2).
It may be true that “there is no research or ranking” defining UD as a party
school (R. Durkle, personal communication, August 7, 2007), but this does not
mean that potential UD students do not hear the phrase “party school” used in
conjunction with UD. While UD’s admissions materials may not advertise campus
15 alcohol consumption, it is possible that prospective students rely more heavily on other sources of information about UD that do include information about alcohol use and partying. Thus, the questions that the first phase of this study seeks to answer are: What messages do prospective students receive about alcohol use
and partying at UD? Where do prospective students hear, read, or otherwise find
these messages?
This phase of the study will then provide the groundwork for determining
whether UD administrators should be concerned about existing messages about
alcohol use and partying at UD. In other words, the hypothesis for the second
phase of this study is that students who have more positive attitudes toward
alcohol use and partying and who drink more heavily in high school will report
having been more positively influenced in their college choice process by
messages about alcohol use and partying at UD than other students.
Finally, based on the findings of the first two phases, the third phase will
attempt to answer the questions: What kind of message(s) attracts a high
concentration of heavy-drinking students? What kind of message(s) could help
universities attract a more diverse set of students who use alcohol in a moderate,
responsible manner?
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CHAPTER 2
STUDY 1
Methods
This first phase of research sought to answer the questions: What
messages do prospective students receive about alcohol use and partying at
UD? Where do prospective students hear, read, or otherwise find these
messages? Approval to conduct this research was granted by the University of
Dayton’s Institutional Review Board for the Protection of Human Subjects in
Research.
Subjects. Participants were recruited from within the first-year class at the
University of Dayton, as first-year students had most recently experienced the college choice process. This eliminated any ethical difficulties that could have arisen from interviewing actual prospective students who had not yet committed to a university. Participants were required to be full-time students who lived on campus, to control for the fact that part-time, commuter, and other nontraditional students were likely to have sought different information and used different criteria when choosing a college than a traditional full-time student.
E-mails were sent to all professors who taught first-year experience classes, as all first-year students are required to enroll in one of these classes.
Professors who expressed a willingness to pass the necessary information onto
17 their students were sent a shorter e-mail to forward to their students that briefly explained the study and how to participate. Twenty-five professors agreed to pass on this message. In order to reduce volunteer bias, the word “alcohol” was not used in the study description; instead, participants were told they would be asked about certain messages they might have heard during their college search process. Students were told they would be compensated for participation with a
$10 gift card to the university bookstore. Fifty-six students volunteered to be interviewed.
Participants were chosen from among the volunteers using a stratified random sample based on the percentage of the first-year class who had enrolled in the three Schools (Business, Education and Allied Professions, and
Engineering) and the four areas of the College of Arts and Sciences (humanities, social sciences, sciences, and fine arts). Twenty-one students were chosen to be interviewed; 20 interviews were completed and one student did not respond to attempts to schedule an interview.
Of the 20 participants, 80% (n=16) were female and 20% (n=4) were male. One respondent did not indicate her race; of the remaining 19 participants,
17 (89.5%) identified themselves as white; one (5.3%) identified as white/Middle
Eastern and one (5.3%) identified as Arab/European. Half (n=10) of the participants attended a public high school and the other 50% (n=10) attended a
Catholic high school. Each participant provided his or her hometown, and 55%
(n=11) came from Ohio while 45% (n=9) were from out of state.
18
Procedure. All interviews were conducted in the lounge of the university’s
Women’s Center, which is a public area but not well-frequented by anyone but the few Center staff members. Participants were contacted by phone and e-mail to set up a mutually agreeable time to conduct the interview. Participants were asked to sign an informed consent form and complete a brief demographic form prior to beginning the interview. The participants were asked questions based on an interview guide created by the researcher; follow-up questions were asked if a participant’s answer did not provide the type of information sought by the initial question. Interviews lasted, on average, between 10 and 15 minutes. Interviews were recorded on a digital recorder and then loaded onto the researcher’s computer. The interviews were then transcribed from the recordings and rechecked for accuracy.
Instrumentation. The interview guide was designed to elicit responses pertaining to messages that participants received about UD during the process of
choosing a college, specifically those messages relating to alcohol use and
partying at UD. Also addressed within the interview guide were the effects that
these messages had on a participant’s decision to attend UD, the reasons that
the participants gave to others for choosing UD, and the participants’ hypothetical
descriptions of UD to a prospective student.
Because of the unique testimony of those who have attended a school in
which a prospective student is interested, participants were first asked if they had
known anyone who attended UD before the participants chose to come here.
They were also asked if they had had an overnight visit, as they would have likely
19 received information about UD from a host student as well. Participants who answered affirmatively were asked a separate set of questions that included questions about the testimony of the past or current students they knew regarding alcohol and partying at UD. Only two participants reported not knowing any past or current UD students prior to attending UD.
See Appendix A for the complete interview guide.
Data analysis. Interview transcriptions were read thoroughly using a grounded theoretical approach (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) to determine primary themes and patterns. A survey instrument was then developed based on the themes and patterns gathered from this first phase. More detail will be provided regarding this in a following chapter.
Results
Messages. The majority of interviewees (n=17; 85%) had heard about parties at UD prior to attending, and most (n=15; 75%) said they had heard the phrase “party school” used in conjunction with UD. Two participants, not counted as answering affirmatively, noted that they had heard messages about parties at
UD after committing to attend the university but before beginning the school year.
Before being asked any questions about parties, the 18 interviewees who knew current students or alumni were asked to name the top three ways that the people they knew spent their time while at UD. Of these participants, seven
(39%) named “partying,” “drinking,” or “going out” (a common expression at UD for going to parties in the student neighborhoods, which are nicknamed the
20
“Ghetto” and the “Darkside”) as one of the primary activities of someone they knew who attends or previously attended UD. Three other participants (17%) made a point to note that the person whose activities they were describing did not party often or would not have admitted to partying.
Participants were asked to recall how parties had been described to them as prospective students; a few students had witnessed parties during overnight campus visits and described their impressions of parties from their own experience. Several themes emerged from the descriptions. The first was the large amount of alcohol, particularly beer; one student summed up parties this way: “Beer, beer, and more beer.” Secondly, many participants mentioned hearing that the alcohol at UD parties was free. Similarly, parties were described as open and welcoming to everyone, especially first-year students. One student described it this way: “It was pretty much insinuated that I could go down to the
Ghetto and probably go to any party and not have to pay and be welcome there, even if I didn’t really know the people.”
Two words commonly used in the descriptions were “fun” and “crazy,” although a few students specifically said that this [“crazy”] did not mean the parties were out of control or that people were irresponsible, but rather it referred to the abundance of alcohol, the large number of parties in a small area, and the large number of students who went to these parties. Several students said that while they were told that they wouldn’t be pressured to drink, it was also clear that partying was “a really common thing for kids to do,” or as one person said
21 she was told, “Instead of going to bars, like everybody goes to the Ghetto on the weekends.”
Of the 17 students who had heard about parties from a current student or alumnus, most (n=10; 59%) had not heard about Public Safety’s involvement in the neighborhood during parties. It should be noted that the phrasing of this particular question was changed from “Public Safety” to “police” after it was clear that several students understood “Public Safety” as only a reference to the UD
Rescue Squad. Interestingly, the message that students received about UD
Public Safety was very consistent: Almost all of those who were told something about Public Safety were told that they should stay off the sidewalk while drinking because, as one student explained, “that was the only thing that Public Safety really . . . looked at.” Although it is not true that students are immune from receiving a citation if drinking underage on a lawn or porch, this is the message that these interviewees, as prospective students, consistently received from current students and alumni.
Of the eight students who had heard about parties from a source other than UD students, only two had found any information about Public Safety — one said he had learned from “hearsay” and the student handbook that the UD police were not “real cops” and based their decisions on UD policy rather than state law; the other said she had read that UD had its own police force that patrolled the student neighborhood, but added that in her experience since coming here she has found that the police are not “very proactive” and are “outnumbered” by students.
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Only four students knew about the presence of a Pub on campus prior to arriving to UD, and three of these learned about the Pub by seeing it while visiting campus. It does not seem that the Pub is often mentioned to prospective students, and therefore it is unlikely that this has any significant effect on attracting students to UD.
All of the students interviewed had heard the word “community” used in conjunction with UD. At least four students laughed when asked this question, and several interviewees mentioned that it was “everywhere” and they heard it, as one student said, “oh so many times.” When asked to give examples of what made UD a community, the answers varied greatly. Participants most commonly said that there was just a “feeling” about UD that they felt when visiting campus, usually described as people being friendly and saying hello. Other examples given by multiple interviewees were service projects, the Marianist ideals, and the student neighborhood. One student had an interesting take on why the student neighborhood was given as an example of UD’s community:
I think probably the tour guide and the counselor would have used it to describe why they have the student neighborhood. Like instead of saying, oh, that’s where they have all the parties, I think they would say, the sense of community, you know, through the student neighborhood.
UD as a community was clearly a message that most participants had received multiple times, though their understanding of the meaning of this word seemed to come primarily from participants’ own experiences.
Message sources. Messages about partying at UD came primarily from people with direct connections to UD (current students and alumni), though this was not the only source of these messages. Of the 18 interviewees who knew
23 someone who attended UD, all but two (89%) had heard about parties in the UD student neighborhood from at least one current student or alumnus. Most of these interviewees (n=13; 72%) knew someone from their high school who currently or previously attended UD; seven (39%) had one or more family members who had attended UD; and five (28%) knew someone who was not a family member or former classmate.
On the other hand, when the participants were asked whether they had heard about parties at UD from a source other than an alumnus or current UD student, most (n=11; 58%) said they had not (one interviewee was not asked this question, as she said she consulted no sources for information about UD other than her two brothers, who are UD students). Of the remaining eight, only three cited specific sources (Web sites and firsthand experience on a campus visit), while the other five said that UD simply had a “reputation.” As one student, who lives near Cleveland, explained:
It’s kind of really well-known that the Ghetto is — you know, that goes along with it. So . . . no one really needed to tell me; I just kind of always have heard that for years, from different people.
The two participants who did not know alumni or current students said they did not hear about parties prior to applying, but they both heard UD called a
“party school” after committing, one from current UD students and one from current Ohio University students. On the whole, messages about parties at UD were received verbally, either from the testimony of UD students or from a word- of-mouth “reputation,” far more often than in written form.
24
Consistent with past research (Galotti, 1995; James, 2001), most students did not use extensive search processes when looking for information about UD.
Students were asked to list all the sources they consulted for information about
UD during their college choice process (not including the current students and alumni they had previously mentioned) and were encouraged to list more sources until they could not think of another source they had used. Web sites were counted individually (e.g., UD’s Web site, College Board, Peterson’s). Of the 20 interviewees, most (n=14; 70%) listed three or fewer sources of information. When interactions with previously known persons (teachers, guidance counselors, high school friends, etc.) were taken out, 17 (85%) of the interviewees consulted three or fewer sources of information.
Though it is not possible to infer conclusively from this that prospective
students rely more heavily on the testimony of people they know than from other
sources, this is certainly something worth exploring, particularly as messages
about parties seem to come primarily from personal interactions. Interestingly,
several interviewees did not list the Web site Facebook among their sources
consulted but later said that they had heard UD was a party school from seeing
the phrase used on Facebook. This demonstrates that prospective students may
receive messages about UD that they do not consider part of their search for
college information, but which nonetheless have the possibility of affecting their
view of the school.
Messages about UD as a community came almost exclusively from
sources directly connected to UD, with the exception of messages received by
25 two interviewees who had attended Marianist high schools and knew that community was part of the Marianist charism. Participants described three types of sources of the word “community” used in conjunction with UD: materials created by UD (e.g., pamphlets, fliers, letters, the UD Web site); UD employees
(e.g., tour guides, counselors, faculty members); and UD students, either those they knew personally or those they met during a campus visit. It seemed from many interviewees’ descriptions that the word was used ad nauseam. One participant described seeing and hearing the word multiple times:
A lot of the information . . . that was sent to me from the university: “We’re about building community, we’re about creating a community culture, we want—” blah blah blah. When I was here on a campus visit, “community” was a very prevalent word and the tour guide used it quite a bit. It was all over the place.
Message effects and thought processes. The 17 participants who had
heard about parties at UD prior to coming were asked how this affected their
desire to attend UD. Just over half (n=9; 53%) said it had no effect on their
decision, and the reason given most often was that the interviewee assumed that
parties would be at every college and that UD was no different. A few
interviewees said that it was not a factor because they did not plan to drink in
college or did not consider partying important. Three of these 17 participants
(18%) said that what they heard about parties slightly decreased their desire to
attend UD, though they decided to attend anyway. Two of the participants (12%)
said their desire to attend increased slightly, both giving the reason that they did
not want to go to a “completely strict” school where drinking was not an option.
Two other participants (12%) were clear that what they heard about parties
26 increased their desire to attend UD. Both spoke positively about partying, and one said it was the balance of school and partying that attracted him:
’Cause some of the kids that I talked with, I partied with in high school, I hung out a lot with in high school, and so . . . them telling me that it was good times here, I was kind of confident, this school, it knows how to work, but still knows how to have fun at the same time.
The three participants who had not heard about parties at UD prior to applying were asked how their decision would have been affected if they had known what they now know of parties. Two said their decision would not have been affected, giving similar reasons as the other participants whose decision was not affected. The third said her desire to attend would have decreased: “I think there’s too much of an emphasis on partying. . . . Every school has parties, but it’s just too big here.”
To gain greater insight into how these messages about alcohol and partying at UD played into participants’ thoughts about UD, participants were asked whether they had discussions about alcohol or partying with friends or classmates who were also looking at UD. Twelve of the 20 participants (60%) knew friends or classmates who were considering UD at the same time they were, and of these, slightly more than half (n=7; 58%) remembered having discussions about alcohol or partying with their friends or classmates. The description of these discussions helped bring out the range of opinions about
UD’s party reputation among prospective students. One participant said he was the only one of his friends “that wanted to go here partly because of that [the partying].” Another participant said that while she and her roommate didn’t come to party, she knew several people who ended up attending UD who “talked a lot
27 about the partying at UD, so I think that was probably a bonus for them.” Another interviewee had a friend who chose not to come to UD because he wished to discontinue his heavy use of alcohol. Interestingly, one participant succinctly and unknowingly summed up the second phase of research, saying, “Everybody kind of gets that ‘party school vibe’ about UD, so I guess it just would depend how much you party, if that’s a determining factor for you.”
All interviewees said that the description of UD as a community increased their desire to attend, though this was clearly more important to some than to others. Many of the participants, describing why the community aspect was attractive, compared it to other schools that they felt were bigger and more impersonal, or simply said that they wished to go to a smaller school.
Size was also one of the main reasons cited when interviewees described what they told their friends about why they were attending UD. (The answers to this question did not differ substantially from the answers about what interviewees told adults.) Other common themes were the friendliness of the students, the feeling of community, the strength of the academic programs
(specifically mentioned were engineering and education), and the attractiveness of the campus. Only two participants mentioned UD’s parties when describing what they told their friends about UD, the same two that said that messages about UD’s parties definitely increased their desire to attend. So while most participants had heard of UD’s parties prior to applying, this factor did not seem to be a conscious part of the decision to attend for most students.
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Using the messages identified in this phase, a survey was created for the second phase to determine the messages’ effects on students’ perceptions of
UD.
Discussion
The two questions that this first phase sought to answer were: What messages do prospective students receive about alcohol use and partying at
UD? and Where do prospective students hear, read, or otherwise find these messages?
Most prospective students hear that there are parties at UD prior to applying, and most hear UD called a “party school.” Parties are described as the primary weekend activity of a majority of students and involving a large amount of alcohol that is freely distributed, especially to underclassmen, and consumed by a large number of people within a small area. The police are described as not interfering with students’ drinking unless they go on the sidewalk or street. On the other hand, the Pub seems to play little to no role in the messages about alcohol use that prospective students receive, and it does not seem necessary to pursue this avenue further as a potential factor.
The majority of messages about alcohol use and partying come from personal interactions between prospective students and people they know, either from those who attend or previously attended UD or from others who have heard of UD’s party reputation. Students may also receive messages from Web sites like Facebook even if not consulting the site for the purpose of seeking
29 information about UD. While almost all of the interviewees consulted current students or alumni for information about UD, most consulted few other sources for information, meaning that what these UD students say about UD constitutes a significant portion of the messages received by prospective students about UD.
Applying the theory of symbolic interactionism, the meaning that
prospective students ascribe to UD is developed out of the messages they
receive about it; however, the students’ own thought processes also play a
significant role in creating their view of UD. This would mean that the effect that
messages about partying have on a student’s conscious view of UD depends on
the extent to which that student considers partying an important factor. For at
least two of the students interviewed, UD’s party reputation played a role in their
decision to attend. The second phase of this study will help determine why this
factor was more important to these individuals than to others.
The discussion of UD as a community raises several interesting points.
While UD as a party school seems to be an image perpetuated by alumni,
students, and others outside of the university, UD as a community is the image
put forth by UD’s Office of Admission. While this image seems to have an overall
positive effect on prospective students, it is by no means incompatible with the
image of UD as a party school, and in many ways reinforces the messages that
students receive about parties: They are open and welcoming, they are events
where many students come together, they provide free drinks, etc. It is possible
that because UD is a community, it is seen as a more attractive party school to
those looking for one compared to other so-called party schools. The image of
30
UD as a party school has tangible evidence — the student neighborhoods — whereas UD as a community is primarily manifested as a “feeling” that students experience when coming to visit. Also, messages about UD as a community come almost entirely from people with close ties to UD, whereas messages about UD’s parties in the student neighborhood come from those both inside and outside of UD.
From what the participants said about their discussions with friends about
UD, there does not seem to be significant pressure among high school students to choose a school with a party reputation, as would be suggested by the concept of the “generalized other.” However, it is possible that students who are positively influenced by a school’s party reputation are not ascribing importance to the party image per se, but rather to what they believe it stands for, such as a good social atmosphere. The second phase of this study can determine whether students are more positively influenced by messages about a party reputation if they consider partying as an important factor in being social, and whether this is tied to a perception that the “generalized other” of their peers typically engage in drinking alcohol and attending parties where alcohol is present.
Limitations. One clear limitation in this study was the fact that the
interviewees were first-year students speaking retrospectively about their
experiences as prospective students. It is impossible to state conclusively that
participants were not influenced by their own experiences since arriving at UD
when describing the messages they received about UD prior to applying. The
fact that there were four times as many female interviewees as male
31 interviewees may have also limited the ability of this study to get a comprehensive picture of the messages that exist about partying and alcohol use at UD.
While the qualitative nature of this study was helpful in broadly determining the messages that exist about alcohol use and partying at UD and the primary sources of these messages, its limited scope makes it difficult to draw conclusions about the specific effects of these messages and what factors may influence the strength of those effects. Additionally, the interview questions intended to determine the effects of certain messages focused on the “desire to attend UD,” and it seemed that several of the participants interpreted these questions as asking whether a particular message (e.g., UD as a party school or as a community) was a determining factor in their decision to attend. A better question might have been, “Did you have a more positive or more negative view of UD after hearing [message]?” particularly considering that all of the participants cited numerous factors that went into their eventual decision to attend UD.
The fact that this study focuses on only one university limits its generalizability and also excludes part-time, non-traditional, and commuter students. If the messages described in this study are found to have an influence on certain students’ views of UD, these findings at best will provide incentive for similar research to be done at other universities or on a nationwide level. Also, because this study included only students who chose to attend UD, it is missing the perspective of those students whose decision not to attend may have been
32 influenced by messages they heard about alcohol use and partying at UD.
Therefore, while these messages positively influenced the college decisions of at least a few students, it is impossible to say that messages about alcohol use or partying played a role in any prospective student’s decision not to attend UD.
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CHAPTER 3
STUDY 2
Methods
This hypothesis for this second phase of research was that students who have more positive attitudes toward alcohol use and partying and who drink more heavily in high school will report having been more positively influenced in their college choice process by messages about alcohol use and partying at UD than other students. Approval to conduct this research was granted by the University of Dayton’s Institutional Review Board for the Protection of Human Subjects in
Research.
Subjects. The online survey for this phase of research was open to all undergraduate students at the University of Dayton. Because a sampling frame of all undergraduate e-mail addresses was not available, it was necessary to seek voluntary respondents. Respondents were sought using two university listservs that are sent to all undergraduate students who have not unsubscribed.
Messages were sent between March 11 and March 26, 2008. The messages provided a link to the survey and informed students that respondents would be entered into a drawing to win one of two $25 gift cards for a restaurant near campus.
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A total of 379 students responded to the survey. After eliminating all surveys that did not include responses past the demographic section and eliminating two who did not complete the last section, there were 355 surveys to analyze. Of the 354 who gave their gender, 26.8% (n=95) were male and 73.2%
(n=259) were female. There was a near-equal distribution among the class levels, with 24.5% (n=87) in their first year, 25.6% (n=91) in their second year,
25.1% (n=89) in their third year, and 22.3% (n=79) in their fourth year, with an additional 2.5% (n=9) indicating they were in a fifth year or more of undergraduate study.
Procedure. Respondents who clicked the link in the listserv message were taken to the survey on the Web site surveymonkey.com. The first page was a consent form that explained the study and asked respondents to select a button labeled “I Agree” if they understood and agreed to the terms of the survey.
Respondents then answered four pages of survey questions, including demographic information. Respondents were provided with a 5-digit code on the final page of the survey and asked to e-mail the code to a specific e-mail address created for this study. This allowed respondents to participate in the drawing without having their responses matched to their names or e-mail addresses.
Instrumentation. The survey used in this phase of the study consisted of
four sections, the first of which asked for specific demographic information that
could reasonably be thought to influence the college factors a prospective
student would consider (e.g., whether the student lived in-state, whether the
student commuted during his or her first year).
35
The second section was designed to determine respondents’ pre-existing attitudes toward alcohol use and partying in college during the two years before they enrolled at UD. This section used Likert-type scales and asked respondents to rate retrospectively their attitudes about the importance of partying, beliefs about the prevalence of alcohol use and partying among college students, and intentions to drink alcohol and attend parties in college. There was adequate internal consistency within these six items (Cronbach’s alpha = .869).
The third section was designed to measure respondents’ pre-existing behaviors involving alcohol use and party attendance during the two years before they enrolled at UD. Respondents were asked to answer retrospectively about the frequency with which they attended parties where alcohol was present, the average number of alcoholic drinks they consumed when drinking, and the frequency with which they got drunk or blacked out. There was adequate internal consistency across these four items (Cronbach’s alpha = .899).
The fourth section contained a list of the most common messages about alcohol use and partying that, in the first phase of this study, students had reported hearing during their search for information about UD. The message “UD is a community” was also included for the sake of comparison, as this is a message most students (n=348; 98.0%) report hearing. For each message, respondents were asked if they had received this message about UD prior to enrolling, and if so, they were asked to mark on a semantic differential scale how the message affected their perception of UD, from “more positive” to “more negative.”
36
See Appendix B for the complete survey.
Data analysis. Responses to the question “During the two years before attending UD, on occasions when I consumed alcohol, I had, on average, this number of drinks” were recoded to fit into five categories (0, 1-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10+) to make this question comparable to the other measures of pre-existing partying behavior and alcohol use. This breakdown was chosen because it allows for a division of nondrinkers from moderate drinkers from those who just fall into the binge drinking category (four or more drinks for females, five or more for males, based on definition of Wechsler, Dowdall, Davenport & Rimm, 1995) and creates equal interval groupings of drinkers. Respondents who replied to the statement
“During the two years before attending UD, on occasions when I consumed alcohol, I got drunk” with the response “I did not drink during this time period” but did not provide a number of drinks were coded as consuming zero drinks.
Each question asking the respondent if he or she had received a particular message had five answer choices: “Yes, I heard this frequently”; “Yes, I heard this once or twice”; “I did not hear this message, but it was implied through stories or other evidence”; “No”; and “I received only a contrary message, such as [Example of appropriate contrary message, e.g., ‘It is difficult to obtain alcohol as a first-year student at UD.’].” For the ease of interpretation, these responses were recoded into three attributes, combining the first three answer choices into the attribute “Yes.” For respondents who indicated that they had not received the message or had received a contrary message, any rating of perceptions was deleted.
37
The six items regarding pre-existing attitudes toward partying and alcohol use were added together to create a new variable, the Pre-Existing Attitudes
Inventory (PEAI). The four items regarding pre-existing partying behavior and alcohol use were added together to create a new variable, the Pre-Existing
Behaviors Inventory (PEBI).
Results
Statistical tests. Frequencies were run to determine how many students reported hearing each of the messages identified in the first phase interviews and listed on the second phase survey instrument. The PEAI and the PEBI were individually correlated with the perception of UD after hearing each of the messages using a Pearson product-moment correlation. Respondents were grouped into high and low drinkers based on the generally accepted number of drinks considered “binge” drinking (Wechsler, Dowdall, Davenport & Rimm,
1995). This allowed for a t-test comparison of each group’s perceptions of UD
after hearing each of the messages. A t-test was also run to compare those who
reported getting drunk and/or blacking out while drinking to those who did not.
Frequency of messages. Message frequencies are shown in Table 1.
Consistent with the findings from the first phase interviews, most students had
heard the messages about partying and alcohol use at UD, with the sole
exception of the message “The police do not prevent underage drinking at UD.”
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Table 1 Frequency of Messages Received by Prospective UD Students
Yes No I received only a contrary message “UD is a community” 348 98.0% 7 2.0% - -
“UD has a lot of parties” 313 88.2% 42 11.8% - -
“Most students at UD party on 299 84.2% 55 15.5% 1 0.3% the weekends”
“UD is a party school” 282 79.4% 72 20.3% 1 0.3%
“It is easy to obtain alcohol as a 252 71.0% 102 28.7% 1 0.3% first-year student at UD”
“UD students know how to 252 71.0% 102 28.7% 1 0.3% balance schoolwork and partying”
“Parties at UD are crazy” 246 69.3% 105 29.6% 4 1.1%
“The police do not prevent 160 45.1% 174 49.0% 21 5.9% underage drinking at UD”
39
Interestingly, a cross-tabulation comparison of year in school with whether respondents received the message “The police do not prevent underage drinking at UD” appears to demonstrate a trend of this message becoming more frequently received, which was found to be statistically significant with a Pearson
Chi-Square test: χ2 (8, N=355) = 24.910, p<.01. This was the only message that
produced a statistically significant trend, which can be seen in Table 2. On the other hand, the first-year class had the largest number of students (n=9) who reported receiving a contrary message such as “The police prevent underage drinking at UD,” though this is still a very small number.
Effect of pre-existing attitudes and behaviors. Both the PEAI and the PEBI were positively correlated with perceptions of UD for all of the messages regarding alcohol use and partying and were statistically significant at p<.01.
Having positive attitudes toward partying and alcohol use and having a history of party attendance and alcohol use were shown to increase the likelihood of perceiving UD more positively after hearing any of the messages included in the survey, with the exception of “UD is a community.”
As seen in Table 3, the strongest correlation for the PEAI was between the PEAI and positive perceptions of UD after hearing the message “Most students at UD party on the weekends”; the second strongest was between the
PEAI and perceptions of UD after hearing the message “UD is a party school.”
Perceptions of UD were mostly strongly correlated with the PEBI for the message
“UD is a party school”; the second strongest was between the PEBI and the perceptions of UD after hearing the message “UD has a lot of parties.”
40
Table 2 A 5 x 3 Cross-Tabulation of Year in School and Having Received the Message “The Police Do Not Prevent Underage Drinking at UD”
Yes No I received only a Total contrary message First Year 52 26 9 87
Second Year 43 43 5 91
Third Year 34 54 1 89
Fourth Year 27 47 5 79
Fifth+ Year 4 4 1 9
Total 160 174 21 355
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Table 3 Perception of UD after Hearing Each Message Correlated with Pre-Existing Attitudes, Pre-Existing Behaviors and Average Number of Drinks
PEAI PEBI Number of Drinks PEAI Pearson Correlation 1.000 .670** .230** Sig. (1-tailed) .000 .000 N 355 349 331 PEBI Pearson Correlation .670** 1.000 .315** Sig. (1-tailed) .000 .000 N 349 349 327 “UD has a lot of parties” Pearson Correlation .470** .371** .143** Sig. (1-tailed) .000 .000 .008 N 308 302 286 “Most students at UD Pearson Correlation .568** .377** .161** party on the weekends” Sig. (1-tailed) .000 .000 .004 N 284 278 264 “UD is a party school” Pearson Correlation .523** .415** .158** Sig. (1-tailed) .000 .000 .005 N 282 276 261 “It is easy to obtain Pearson Correlation .447** .331** .049 alcohol as a first-year Sig. (1-tailed) .000 .000 .232 student at UD” N 242 239 223 “UD students know how Pearson Correlation .291** .175** .037 to balance schoolwork Sig. (1-tailed) .000 .004 .295 and partying” N 240 235 218 “Parties at UD are crazy” Pearson Correlation .533** .336** .191** Sig. (1-tailed) .000 .000 .002 N 236 234 218 “The police do not Pearson Correlation .406** .316** .149* prevent underage Sig. (1-tailed) .000 .000 .039 drinking at UD” N 155 154 142 Note. *p<.05 **p<.01
42
Thus the messages most frequently heard by prospective students and the messages whose effects on perceptions were most strongly related to pre- existing attitudes and behaviors were those messages that dealt with the quantity of partying (i.e., “UD has a lot of parties” and “Most students at UD party on the weekends”) or an overall institutional definition related to partying (i.e., “UD is a party school”). Perceptions of UD after hearing these same messages, as well as
“Parties at UD are crazy” and “The police do not prevent underage drinking at
UD,” are also significantly related to the actual number of drinks entered by respondents, indicating that the more a prospective student typically drinks in high school, the more he or she is attracted to UD after hearing these five
messages.
With a high degree of correlation between PEAI and PEBI (r=.670,
p<.001), however, it is possible that variance in the effects of one variable can be
explained by variance in the effects of the other. As shown in Table 4, a partial
correlation between the PEAI and the perceptions of UD after hearing each of the
messages shows that the relationship remains statistically significant for all of the
messages about partying and alcohol use after statistically controlling for PEBI.
On the other hand, when statistically controlling for the effects of PEAI,
there are no statistically significant relationships between PEBI and the
perceptions of UD after hearing the messages about partying and alcohol use.
This indicates that attitudes toward alcohol use and partying (including intentions
to drink in college) have a greater effect on perceptions of UD than current high
school drinking behavior. The correlation between high school drinking behavior
43
Table 4 Pre-Existing Attitudes Correlated with Perception of UD after Hearing Each Message, Controlling for Pre-Existing Behaviors
Control Variable PEAI PEBI “UD has a lot of parties” Correlation .234* Significance (1-tailed) .015 df 83 “Most students at UD party on the Correlation .460** weekends” Significance (1-tailed) .000 df 83 “UD is a party school” Correlation .257** Significance (1-tailed) .009 df 83 “It is easy to obtain alcohol as a first-year Correlation .342** student at UD” Significance (1-tailed) .001 df 83 “UD students know how to balance Correlation .239* schoolwork and partying” Significance (1-tailed) .014 df 83 “Parties at UD are crazy” Correlation .339** Significance (1-tailed) .001 df 83 “The police do not prevent underage Correlation .332** drinking at UD” Significance (1-tailed) .001 df 83 Note. *p<.05 **p<.01
44 and positive perceptions of UD after hearing about the alcohol use at UD
appears to be due primarily to the fact that most heavy drinkers also have strong
positive attitudes toward alcohol use and partying in college. Practically
speaking, the attitudes inventory is more likely to identify both current and future drinkers—those who intend to start drinking in college—than the behaviors inventory, which only identifies current drinkers.
Attitudes and behaviors as combined predictors. Given the results of the partial correlations, does variance in pre-existing behaviors contribute at all to variance in perceptions of UD after receiving the various messages about alcohol use and partying? As seen in Table 5, comparing a simple linear regression of the PEAI and perceptions of UD with a multiple linear regression of the combined
PEAI and PEBI and perceptions of UD demonstrates that for most messages, pre-existing attitudes and pre-existing behaviors together are slightly better able
to predict the resulting perceptions of UD than are pre-existing attitudes alone.
The exceptions are the messages “Parties at UD are crazy” and “It is easy to
obtain alcohol as a first-year student at UD,” for which the simple linear
regression coefficients are very close to the multiple linear regression
coefficients.
t-tests. Recoding the variable “On occasions when I consumed alcohol, I
had, on average, this number of drinks” into two categories, “Low drinkers (0-3
drinks)” and “High drinkers (4-10+ drinks)” allowed for a t-test comparison of
these two groups regarding their perceptions of UD after hearing the messages
about alcohol use and partying. (Consuming four or more drinks on one occasion
45
Table 5 PEAI & PEBI as Predictors of Perception of UD after Receiving Each Message Compared to PEAI Alone as a Predictor
Predictor(s) R R Square “UD has a lot of parties” PEAI .470 .221 PEAI, PEBI .478 .228 “Most students at UD party on the PEAI .568 .323 weekends” PEAI, PEBI .569 .324 “UD is a party school” PEAI .523 .274 PEAI, PEBI .525 .275 “It is easy to obtain alcohol as a first- PEAI .447 .200 year student at UD” PEAI, PEBI .447 .199 “UD students know how to balance PEAI .291 .085 schoolwork and partying” PEAI, PEBI .298 .089 “Parties at UD are crazy” PEAI .533 .284 PEAI, PEBI .532 .283 “The police do not prevent underage PEAI .406 .164 drinking at UD” PEAI, PEBI .412 .170 Note. All regression models are significant at p<.001
46 is considered binge drinking for women, according to Wechsler, Dowdall,
Davenport & Rimm, 1995). As displayed in Table 6, an independent samples t-
test revealed that high drinkers were significantly more attracted to UD than low
drinkers after hearing any of the messages about alcohol use and partying
(p<.005 for all). The messages for which there was the largest difference in
means between low and high drinkers were the same as the messages noted
above whose effect was most strongly related to pre-existing attitudes: “UD is a
party school,” “UD has a lot of parties,” “Parties at UD are crazy,” and “Most
students party on the weekends.” These messages focus on the reputation of the
school more than the actual experience of attending parties with alcohol; this
appears to produce the strongest divide in attraction between high and low
drinkers. All of the messages, however, led to significantly greater attraction to
UD for high drinkers than for low drinkers.
Recoding the variable “On occasions when I consumed alcohol, I got
drunk” into two categories, “Yes” and “No” (the latter of which includes both “no” and “I did not drink during this time period”), allowed for a t-test comparison of these two groups regarding their perceptions of UD after hearing the messages about alcohol use and partying. The same was done for the variable “On occasions when I consumed alcohol, I blacked out (could not remember what had happened).” These independent samples t-tests demonstrate that students who reported drinking to intoxication (as measured by these two factors) during the two years before enrolling at UD were significantly more attracted to UD after hearing any of the messages about alcohol use and partying than those who did
47
Table 6
Independent Samples t-test of Low Drinkers vs. High Drinkers on Perceptions of UD after Receiving Each Message
N Mean t df Sig. “UD has a lot of parties” Low drinker (0-3) 222 4.0721 -5.449 301 .000 High drinker (4+) 81 4.9753 “Most UD students Low drinker (0-3) 204 4.1765 -4.904 277 .000 party on the weekends” High drinker (4+) 75 4.9867 “UD is a party school” Low drinker (0-3) 203 3.7192 -6.055 275 .000 High drinker (4+) 74 4.8378 “It is easy to obtain Low drinker (0-3) 173 3.8728 -3.646 237 .000 alcohol as a first-year High drinker (4+) 66 4.4394 student at UD” “UD students know how Low drinker (0-3) 168 5.2798 -2.836 234 .005 to balance schoolwork High drinker (4+) 68 5.7794 and partying” “Parties at UD are Low drinker (0-3) 165 4.0848 -5.109 232 .000 crazy” High drinker (4+) 69 5.0145 “The police do not Low drinker (0-3) 108 3.6389 -3.200 110.039 .002 prevent underage High drinker (4+) 46 4.3043 drinking at UD” * Note. *Equal variances not assumed
48 not report drinking to intoxication (p<.01 for all).
First-year residential status also appeared to play a role in the extent to
which students’ views of UD were influenced by the messages, as seen in Table
7. Students who lived in university housing for their first year were more
positively influenced than commuter students when hearing the messages “The
police do not prevent underage drinking at UD,” “Parties at UD are crazy,” “UD
students know how to balance schoolwork and partying,” “Most UD students
party on the weekends,” and “It is easy to obtain alcohol as a first-year student at
UD.” This is a different set of messages than those that most strongly divide
students along the lines of pre-existing attitudes and behaviors. This may be
because those students who live in university housing are more likely to attend
neighborhood parties than students living off-campus (and thus have greater
concerns about the ease of obtaining alcohol and getting caught with it), but both
types of students experience the consequences, positive or negative, of
attending a school with UD’s reputation.
49
Table 7 Independent Samples t-test of University Housing Resident vs. Commuter on Perceptions of UD after Receiving Each Message
N Mean t df Sig. “UD has a lot of parties” University 282 4.3582 1.858 303 .064 housing resident Commuter 23 3.8261 “Most UD students University 261 4.4483 2.216 279 .028 party on the weekends” housing resident Commuter 20 3.8000 “UD is a party school” * University 259 4.0116 .049 27.549 .961 housing resident Commuter 21 4.7333 “It is easy to obtain University 223 4.0762 2.114 240 .036 alcohol as a first-year housing resident student at UD” Commuter 19 3.5263 “UD students know how University 223 5.4619 2.216 236 .028 to balance schoolwork housing resident and partying” Commuter 15 4.7333 “Parties at UD are University 213 4.4319 2.353 232 .019 crazy” housing resident Commuter 21 3.7143 “The police do not University 144 3.9306 2.931 153 .004 prevent underage housing resident drinking at UD” Commuter 11 2.7273 Note. *Equal variances not assumed.
50
Discussion
The hypothesis for the second phase of this study was that students who have more positive attitudes toward alcohol use and partying and who drink more heavily in high school will report having been more positively influenced in their college choice process by messages about alcohol use and partying at UD than other students.
This hypothesis was supported, though it appears that students’ attitudes carry stronger weight than their behaviors when it comes to how messages about alcohol use and partying at UD will affect their perceptions of the university.
Remember, however, that half of the items in the attitudes measure were about a student’s intention to attend parties and drink alcohol in college, so this still has significant consequences for the university. Students who are most attracted to the messages about partying and alcohol use at UD are those that bring with them the intention to engage in those same behaviors upon arrival.
There is also a high degree of correlation between attitudes and behaviors, and the combination of attitudes and behaviors is a stronger predictor of how a student will respond to a message about alcohol use or partying at UD than the student’s attitudes alone. Comparing the mean responses for low and high drinkers, and those who drank to intoxication and those who did not, demonstrated that there is a significant difference in how attracted these students were to UD after hearing messages about alcohol use and partying. It is safe to say that a student who is more attracted to UD after hearing messages about alcohol use and partying there is likely both to feel more positively about alcohol
51 use and partying and to drink significantly more alcohol than someone who is not more attracted to UD by these messages.
It is necessary to again make the point that this does not mean that UD’s reputation concerning parties and student alcohol use is the sole factor, or even one of the top factors, in a student’s decision to attend UD. Rather, these results suggest that this factor merits more attention than it has previously warranted in helping to provide a more complete picture of a student’s reasons for being attracted to a particular school. These results also support the idea that a party culture may be perpetuated by incoming students if existing messages about the school are attracting party- and alcohol-oriented students.
The pervasiveness of the messages included in this survey also argues
for the importance of considering how these messages affect prospective
students’ views of UD. Almost all of the messages about alcohol use and
partying had been received by over half of the students before they enrolled in
UD, and there is evidence that the one exception to this (“The police at UD do
not prevent underage drinking”) is becoming a more common message. If it can
therefore be taken as a given that a vast majority of prospective students will
have heard something about partying or alcohol use at UD prior to enrolling, it
becomes vital to examine how these messages are shaping prospective
students’ views about UD, and more importantly, what kind of students are most
attracted to UD by these messages. This study suggests that the students who
are most strongly attracted by these pervasive messages about alcohol use and
52 partying at UD are the students who are most likely to perpetuate the party culture.
It appears that the messages about UD for which there is the largest difference in attraction between light and heavy drinkers, and between those with negative attitudes toward alcohol use and partying and those with positive attitudes, are those messages that mark partying as a defining feature of the university. Rather than micro-level variables such as an individual’s likelihood of getting free alcohol or of receiving consequences for underage drinking (though these also affect attraction), these are macro-level variables that deal with the school as a whole: the definition of UD as a “party school” and as a school with a
“lot of parties” and where “most students” party on the weekend. (The message
“Parties at UD are crazy” could be either a macro-level or a micro-level variable depending on whether one is thinking about the overall reputation of UD’s parties or the actual experience of attending a UD party.) This supports the idea that university administrators should focus not only on making changes within the existing campus culture, but also on reshaping the university’s overall image concerning partying and student alcohol use.
On the other hand, the strength of influence of micro-level messages on students’ views of UD was to some extent a result of their first-year living situation. Students living on campus were more likely to view UD positively after hearing about the availability of free alcohol, the lack of prevention of underage drinking, and students’ ability to balance schoolwork and partying than were commuter students. Given that UD students tend to attend parties on or around
53 campus, it makes sense that students on campus would be more strongly influenced by messages regarding actual parties than students who would be equally as affected by UD’s overall reputation but less affected by the parties themselves.
The results of this phase of the study suggest that both messages about
UD’s party reputation (which, broadly speaking, are related to the quantity of partying) and messages about the parties themselves (which could be described as the quality of partying) result in varying views of UD according to a prospective student’s attitudes toward partying and alcohol use and his or her own partying behavior and alcohol use. These findings are consistent with the theory of symbolic interactionism, arguing that the overall meaning that prospective students attach to UD is a combination of the messages they hear about it through interactions with others and their own interpretations of those messages. Clearly the third premise of symbolic interactionism holds true here:
Students’ views of UD are not influenced identically by the existing messages about partying and alcohol use at UD, but rather these views are mediated by individual factors such as pre-existing attitudes and behaviors regarding partying
and alcohol use.
Limitations. The limitations of this phase of the study are similar to those
of the first phase. Students were asked to report retrospectively their attitudes
and behaviors during the two years before they enrolled at UD, which for some
students was at least four years ago. There is no way to guarantee that students’
own experiences since arriving at UD did not color their responses. There were
54 also nearly three times as many female respondents as male respondents, which may have influenced the results, though no significant gender differences were found.
The generalizability of this study is limited by its focus on students at one university. If this study is replicated for another university, it will be necessary to determine what messages, if any, prospective students most often hear about the university related to partying and alcohol use before the effects of those messages can be determined.
Again, because this phase of the study included only students who chose to attend UD, it is missing the perspective of those students whose decision not to attend may have been influenced by messages they heard about alcohol use and partying at UD. Therefore, while these messages positively influenced the view of UD for some students, it is impossible to say that messages about alcohol use or partying played a role in any prospective student’s decision not to attend UD.
The messages used in this phase of the study were taken from the first phase interviews and not modified for clarification, in order to get responses about messages as they authentically exist when received by prospective students. This, however, left room for ambiguity, particularly concerning the definition of a “party.” Although the interviewees in the first phase used this word consistently to mean “a party where alcohol is available,” it is certainly possible to have a party without any alcohol. It is possible that some respondents interpreted the word “party” to mean “a party with no alcohol” or parties both with and without
55 alcohol; however, because the word “party” is so often used to refer to a party with alcohol, it is unlikely that this ambiguity significantly jeopardizes this study’s conclusions.
56
CHAPTER 4
STUDY 3
Methods
This third phase of research sought to answer the questions: What kind of message(s) attracts a high concentration of heavy-drinking students? What kind of message(s) could help universities attract a more diverse set of students who
use alcohol in a moderate, responsible manner? Approval to conduct this
research was granted by the University of Dayton’s Institutional Review Board for
the Protection of Human Subjects in Research.
Subjects. Principals of all Dayton-area high schools were contacted via
letter requesting permission to survey senior students. The letter explained the
purpose of the study, the proposed methods for surveying students, and that
students would be asked about attitudes only, not about their drinking behavior.
Permission was granted to survey seniors at three high schools, two public
schools and one private, Catholic school. One hundred and sixteen (116) surveys were returned; six students were removed from the data set who indicated they did not intend to attend college. Of the 110 remaining students,
44.5% (n=49) were male and 54.5% (n=60) were female; one student did not report a gender.
57
Procedure. Homeroom teachers of senior students were identified and
asked to distribute and collect consent forms from the students, asking those
under 18 to take them home to have a parent sign the form. The consent form did not reveal the researcher’s specific university affiliation to avoid influencing responses. Any student returning a consent form was entered into a raffle for a
restaurant gift card; one student from each school was selected to receive a gift
card. The teachers distributed and collected the surveys during their homeroom
period and brought them to a central location at the school.
Survey responses were entered by hand into SPSS for analysis.
Instrumentation. The survey used for this phase contained three sections.
The first section asked for information similar to that used by many colleges for
determining student admission: GPA, involvement in sports and other
extracurricular activities, volunteer work, and employment. The section also
asked respondents for their gender, which interacts with alcohol use in a number
of ways, and their religious background, as there is some evidence that a
Catholic background can influence alcohol use as well.
The second section was designed to determine respondents’ attitudes
toward alcohol use and partying in college. This section used Likert-type scales
nearly identical to those used in the second phase, asking respondents to rate
their attitudes about the importance of partying, beliefs about the prevalence of
alcohol use and partying among college students, and intentions to drink alcohol
and attend parties in college. There was adequate internal consistency within
these six items (Cronbach’s alpha = .885).
58
The third section contained one of four possible descriptions of a hypothetical university; a near-equal number of surveys were completed with each of the four messages. (The number returned for each was 31, 26, 28, and
25, respectively). The first description was created with phrases taken directly from the first and second phases of this study, describing a “party school” where students have “crazy” parties and it is easy to obtain alcohol without getting in trouble. A second description described a university that has weekend activities for both drinkers and non-drinkers, with easy access to alcohol and minimal consequences for those drinking underage. The third description was of a university with weekend activities for both drinkers and non-drinkers, where it is difficult to get alcohol if one is under age 21 and where there are tough consequences for those drinking underage. The fourth description describes a dry campus with many activities and tough consequences for anyone found with alcohol. This allows for comparison to the three hypothetical universities where alcohol is allowed.
Following the description were questions about the desirability of the hypothetical university, including how the respondent viewed the university, how they believed their friends and other classmates would view the university, and how likely they would be to apply to or attend the university. There was adequate internal consistency within these seven items (Cronbach’s alpha = .908).
The last question of the survey asked students to list colleges or universities they were currently considering attending. This allowed for the
59 possibility of finding patterns in attraction to a particular hypothetical description and desire to attend a particular school.
See Appendix C for the complete survey.
Data analysis. An ANOVA was used to determine overall differences in attraction to each of the hypothetical schools on each of the measures of attraction. The data set was also broken up into the four groups of students who had received each of the different hypothetical university descriptions, allowing a
Pearson product-moment correlation to be performed within each group between
the items measuring attitudes toward alcohol use and partying and the items
measuring attraction to that university. Due to the high internal consistency of the six items on attitudes toward alcohol use and partying, which were nearly identical to those used in Study 2, these were recoded into a new variable, the
Pre-Existing Attitudes Inventory (PEAI). This variable was further recoded into low score (score of 6 to 13), medium score (14 to 22), and high score (23 to 30);
23 (20.9%) participants had a low PEAI score, 54 (49.1%) had a medium score,
and 32 (29.1%) had a high PEAI score.
Due to the high internal consistency of the seven items on attraction to the
hypothetical university, these were recoded into a new variable (University
Attraction), which ranged from scores of 7 to 49. This variable was further
recoded into low attraction (score of 7 to 20), medium attraction (21 to 35), and
high attraction (36 to 49), allowing for ANOVA comparisons using these three
groups.
60
Results
Statistical tests. An independent samples t-test, a one-way ANOVA, and
Pearson product-moment correlations allowed for an examination of trends in attraction and pre-existing attitudes based on gender, religion, involvement, and
GPA. The mean rating of attraction was determined for each of the hypothetical university description on each measure of attraction. One-way ANOVAs were used to compare the four hypothetical universities on measures of attraction and to compare those students with low, medium, and high attraction to each of the universities on demographic and attitudes measures. A Pearson product-moment correlation was also performed for each hypothetical school to determine which student factors were related to whether a student was attracted to the hypothetical school.
Demographic variables. An independent samples t-test found that male students were significantly more likely than female students to believe that partying is important to having a good social life in college (t=3.680, df=106,
p<.001) and to say they intended to get drunk sometimes in college (t=2.216,
df=107, p<.05). A one-way ANOVA indicated that Catholic students had greater
intentions to drink alcohol in college than did Protestant students or students who
were neither Catholic nor Protestant (F(2,105) = 7.509, p=.001). This does not
appear to be influenced by attending a Catholic high school, as students from the
Catholic high school in the sample did not different significantly on any of the
alcohol attitude measures from students at the two public high schools, and an
61 interaction effect between high school and religion for intention to drink in college was not significant (F(4, 99) = .452, n.s.).
A Pearson product-moment correlation on GPA and involvement variables with alcohol attitude and attraction measures found only one area of significance.
As displayed in Table 8, athletic involvement was directly correlated with positive
alcohol attitudes on almost every measure.
Attraction to each university. On nearly every measure of attraction, the
university with many activities and strong enforcement of drinking age laws was
more attractive to the participants who received that message than the other
descriptions were to their respective recipients, as seen in Table 9. The one
exception was how participants thought most high school students would view
each university; the school with many activities and little law enforcement scored
highest for this item, followed by the party school.
As displayed in Table 10, one-way ANOVAs found a significant difference in student attraction to each of the hypothetical universities on almost all measures of attraction, including the variable (University Attraction) that combined the seven measures of attraction. Tukey HSD post-hoc tests indicated that students found the university with many activities and strong enforcement of drinking age laws to be the most consistently attractive. Both this description and that of the dry campus were significantly more attractive than the party school on most measures of attraction, but the dry campus was rated as being significantly less attractive to participants’ friends than the campus with strong enforcement, and significantly less attractive to most high school students than any of the other
62
Table 8
Athletic Involvement Correlated with Alcohol Attitudes
Believe Believe Plan to Believe Plan to Plan PEAI partying is most attend most drink to get important students parties students alcohol drunk party drink Athletic Pearson .142 .237* .204* .273** .228* .242* .263** involvement Correlation Sig. (2-tailed) .142 .013 .033 .004 .017 .011 .006 N 109 110 110 110 110 110 109 Note. *p<.05 **p<.01
63
Table 9
Mean Attraction to Each Hypothetical University
Party Many activities, Many activities, Dry campus school little enforcement strong enforcement How would you Mean 3.9032 4.1923 5.1429 4.8800 rate your overall N 31 26 28 25 perception of this university? SD 1.86824 1.87658 1.45842 1.30128 How would most Mean 4.7097 5.3846 4.5000 2.8400 high school N 31 26 28 25 students view this university? SD 1.39508 1.20256 1.40106 1.34412 How would your Mean 4.4839 4.8462 5.0357 3.8800 friends view this N 31 26 28 25 university? SD 1.71018 1.71330 1.42678 1.45258 To what extent Mean 3.2581 3.7308 4.5357 4.4800 does this match N 31 26 28 25 what you’re looking for? SD 1.73143 1.95054 1.50264 1.63605 How likely would Mean 3.2581 3.8846 4.8571 4.6000 you be to make N 31 26 28 25 a campus visit to this university SD 1.84333 2.00653 1.69344 1.65831 How likely would Mean 3.4194 4.0385 4.9259 4.6000 you be to apply N 31 26 27 25 to this university? SD 1.92828 2.00959 1.56711 1.73205 How likely would Mean 3.6452 4.0000 4.8571 4.5200 you be to attend N 31 26 28 25 this university? SD 2.00912 2.00000 1.64911 1.63605
64
Table 10
One-Way ANOVA of University Description on Measures of Attraction
Sum of Mean Squares df Square F Sig.
University Attraction Between Groups 883.575 3 294.525 3.173 .027
Within Groups 9747.361 105 92.832
Total 10630.936 108
How would you rate your Between Groups 28.674 3 9.558 3.484 .018 overall perception of this university? Within Groups 290.817 106 2.744 Total 319.491 109
How do you think most Between Groups 89.290 3 29.763 16.526 .000 high school students would view this Within Groups 190.901 106 1.801 university? Total 280.191 109
How do you think your Between Groups 20.187 3 6.729 2.674 .051 friends would view this university? Within Groups 266.731 106 2.516 Total 286.918 109
To what extent does this Between Groups 32.663 3 10.888 3.720 .014 description match what you're looking for in a Within Groups 310.255 106 2.927 college or university? Total 342.918 109
How likely would you be Between Groups 45.446 3 15.149 4.641 .004 to make a campus visit to a university like this? Within Groups 346.018 106 3.264 Total 391.464 109
How likely would you be Between Groups 37.785 3 12.595 3.796 .012 to apply to a university like this? Within Groups 348.362 105 3.318 Total 386.147 108
How likely would you be Between Groups 25.089 3 8.363 2.471 .066 to attend a university like this? Within Groups 358.765 106 3.385 Total 383.855 109
65 descriptions. The university with many activities and little enforcement of drinking age laws did not differ significantly in attractiveness from the other descriptions.
The larger within-group variation, compared to between-group variation,
indicates that for each hypothetical university, participants varied greatly in how
attracted they were. Indeed, on the University Attraction measure ranging from 7
to 49, there was wide variation for each of the schools: the party school (11 to
45); the campus with many activities and little enforcement of drinking laws (10 to
49); the campus with many activities and strong enforcement of drinking laws (14
to 49); and the dry campus (7 to 43). Other factors, such as alcohol attitudes,
might therefore dictate whether an individual is attracted to a particular university
after receiving messages about alcohol use and partying there.
A factorial ANOVA with university description and PEAI score (low,
medium, or high) as fixed factors and attraction to the university as the
dependent variable indicates that these factors together influence attraction to a
greater extent than either factor individually (F(6,96) = 6.607, p<.001). A Tukey
HSD post-hoc test on the main effect of PEAI score provides the intriguing
observation that those with a high PEAI score are significantly more attracted to
any university than those with a low PEAI score (p<.01). Still, the factorial
ANOVA, plotted in Figure 1, indicates that which university description
participants receive influences their attraction in combination with their pre-
existing attitudes toward alcohol use and partying to a greater extent than those
attitudes alone.
66
Figure 1 University Description and Pre-Existing Attitudes’ Effect on University Attraction
67
This does not, however, allow one to grasp the whole story. By selecting cases of participants who received each of the four descriptions, it is possible to run a one-way ANOVA comparing those with low, medium, and high PEAI scores on their attraction to the university description they received. As is evident in
Table 11, three of the university descriptions produced different levels of
attraction in participants depending on the participants’ attitudes toward alcohol
use and partying. Only the university with many activities and strong enforcement
did not significantly differ in attractiveness based on the recipient’s attitudes.
Tukey HSD post-hoc tests indicate that for the party school, those with a
high PEAI score (strong positive attitudes toward alcohol use and partying) were
significantly more attracted to the school than those with a low PEAI score
(p<.005). For the school with many activities and little enforcement of drinking
age laws, those with a high PEAI score were significantly more attracted than
those with a medium (p<.05) or low PEAI score (p<.005). For the dry campus,
those with a low PEAI score were significantly more attracted to the school than
those with a high PEAI score (p<.005).
Another way to approach the findings graphed in Figure 1 is to look at
each group of PEAI scores (low, medium, and high) and determine if the
participants in each of these groups differ significantly in attraction level when
presented with each of the possible university descriptions. This would provide
additional information on what kind of attitudes toward alcohol use and partying
incoming students are likely to have at each kind of university.
68
Table 11 One-Way ANOVA of Differences in University Attraction by PEAI Score (Low, Medium, or High Score) for Each University Description
Sum of Mean Squares df Square F Sig.
Party school Between Groups 1177.790 2 588.895 8.208 .002
Within Groups 2008.984 28 71.749
Total 3186.774 30
Many activities, Between Groups 1439.703 2 719.851 9.241 .001 little enforcement Within Groups 1713.737 22 77.897
Total 3153.440 24
Many activities, Between Groups 194.746 2 97.373 1.562 .230 strong enforcement Within Groups 1495.994 24 62.333
Total 1690.741 26
Dry campus Between Groups 658.971 2 329.486 7.113 .004
Within Groups 1019.029 22 46.319
Total 1678.000 24
69
A one-way ANOVA looking only at those with a low PEAI score found that these students were significantly more attracted to the dry campus than to the party school or the university with many activities and little enforcement of drinking age laws (F(3,19) = 10.535, p<.001). The university with many activities and strong law enforcement did not differ significantly in its attractiveness from the other descriptions. Those with a medium PEAI score were not significantly more attracted to any one description over another (F(3,49) = 2.641, n.s.). Those with a high PEAI score rated the dry campus significantly lower on attraction than any of the other hypothetical universities (F(3,28) = 6.884, p<.001).
Both the PEAI and the University Attraction measures are made up of items that, though internally correlated, encompass multiple areas of attitudes and attraction, respectively. A more nuanced understanding of the kind of student each type of university is likely to attract requires an examination of how each attitude item and each attraction item are correlated for each of the different university descriptions.
The Pearson correlations in the following tables paint a slightly different picture for each university. For the party school, both greater personal partying/alcohol use intentions and greater belief that most college students drink and party lead to increased attraction. For the school with many activities and little enforcement of drinking age laws, greater personal intentions to attend parties and use alcohol increase attraction; beliefs about most college students do not greatly influence attraction. For the university with many activities and strong law enforcement, there is no correlation between attraction and personal
70 intentions to party and use alcohol; only believing most students party appears to lead to increased attraction to this type of school. For the dry campus, stronger
beliefs about the importance of partying in college, and stronger intentions to
party and use alcohol in college, lead to decreased attraction to this type of
school. See Tables 12 through 15 for the complete correlations.
Indications of social influence. Two items on the measurement of
attraction to a university ask about perceived views of one’s friends and other
high school students. The five other items on the measure (overall perception,
matches what they’re looking for, would make campus visit, would apply, would
attend) continue to have high internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = .956) and,
added together into a new variable, are significantly correlated with perceptions
of how one’s friends would view the hypothetical university (r=.477, p<.001) and
how other high school students would view the university (r=.173, p<.05).
It is possible, therefore, that one’s own reported attraction to a university is
influenced by how one thinks others would view that university. This is of
particular interest given that the dry campus was ranked second on most
individual attraction items, but was ranked last on how other high school students
and one’s friends would view it. A one-way ANCOVA examining the effect of
each university description on attraction, statistically controlling the effect of
friends’ attraction, found that friends’ attraction was significantly related to one’s
own attraction (F(1,104) = 61.140, p<.001) and university description still
significantly affected attraction (F(3,104) = 7.921, p<.001), but the dry campus
now surpassed the university with many activities and strong law enforcement as
71
Table 12 Correlations of Attraction to Party School with Attitudes Toward Alcohol Use and Partying
I believe partying in I believe I plan to I believe most I plan to I plan to get college is important most college attend parties college drink drunk to having a good students often when I students drink alcohol in sometimes social life party am in college alcohol college in college How would you rate your Pearson .663** .457** .630** .420** .715** .715** overall perception of this Correlation university? Sig. (1-tailed) .000 .005 .000 .009 .000 .000 How do you think most Pearson .183 .320* .277 .108 .198 .217 high schools students Correlation would view this Sig. (1-tailed) .162 .040 .065 .282 .142 .120 university? How do you think your Pearson .188 .188 .251 .160 .228 .327* friends would view this Correlation university? Sig. (1-tailed) .156 .155 .086 .194 .109 .036 To what extent does this Pearson .635** .446** .639** .367* .669** .705** description match what Correlation you’re looking for in a Sig. (1-tailed) .000 .006 .000 .021 .000 .000 university? How likely would you be Pearson .624** .446** .639** .367** .669** .705** to make a campus visit Correlation to a university like this? Sig. (1-tailed) .000 .006 .000 .021 .000 .000 How likely would you be Pearson .687** .500** .607** .233 .536** .535** to apply to a university Correlation like this? Sig. (1-tailed) .000 .002 .000 .103 .001 .001 How likely would you be Pearson .741** .577** .719** .370* .654** .619** to attend a university like Correlation this? Sig. (1-tailed) .000 .000 .000 .020 .000 .000 Note. N=31 in all cases. *p<.05 **p<.01 72
Table 13 Correlations of Attraction to Many Activities/Little Enforcement School with Attitudes Toward Alcohol Use and Partying
I believe partying in I believe I plan to I believe most I plan to I plan to get college is important most college attend parties college drink drunk to having a good students often when I students drink alcohol in sometimes social life party am in college alcohol college in college How would you rate your Pearson .650** .286 .699** .154 .674** .656** overall perception of this Correlation university? Sig. (1-tailed) .000 .078 .000 .227 .000 .000 How do you think most Pearson -.059 -.011 .220 -.057 .260 .372* high schools students Correlation would view this Sig. (1-tailed) .390 .478 .140 .392 .100 .031 university? How do you think your Pearson .563** .328 .654** .284 .822** .768** friends would view this Correlation university? Sig. (1-tailed) .002 .051 .000 .080 .000 .000 To what extent does this Pearson .687** .360* .817** .173 .656** .630** description match what Correlation you’re looking for in a Sig. (1-tailed) .000 .036 .000 .199 .000 .000 university? How likely would you be Pearson .659** .330 .734** .147 .664** .694** to make a campus visit Correlation to a university like this? Sig. (1-tailed) .000 .050 .000 .237 .000 .000 How likely would you be Pearson .750** .374* .797** .225 .740** .702** to apply to a university Correlation like this? Sig. (1-tailed) .000 .030 .000 .134 .000 .000 How likely would you be Pearson .732** .457** .791** .202 .655** .688** to attend a university like Correlation this? Sig. (1-tailed) .000 .009 .000 .162 .000 .000 Note. N=25 for first column; N=26 for all other columns. *p<.05 **p<.01 73
Table 14 Correlations of Attraction to Many Activities/Strong Enforcement School with Attitudes Toward Alcohol Use and Partying
I believe partying in I believe I plan to I believe most I plan to I plan to get college is important most college attend parties college drink drunk to having a good students often when I students drink alcohol in sometimes social life party am in college alcohol college in college How would you rate your Pearson -.011 .399* .287 .193 .232 .122 overall perception of this Correlation university? Sig. (1-tailed) .478 .018 .069 .162 .117 .269 How do you think most Pearson .120 .045 .337* -.179 .080 .069 high schools students Correlation would view this Sig. (1-tailed) .272 .410 .040 .180 .344 .364 university? How do you think your Pearson -.120 .352* .113 .182 .006 -.027 friends would view this Correlation university? Sig. (1-tailed) .271 .033 .283 .178 .489 .446 To what extent does this Pearson .146 .293 .183 .292 .246 .259 description match what Correlation you’re looking for in a Sig. (1-tailed) .229 .065 .175 .066 .103 .092 university? How likely would you be Pearson .207 .475** .368* .427* .360* .417* to make a campus visit Correlation to a university like this? Sig. (1-tailed) .145 .005 .027 .012 .030 .014 How likely would you be Pearson .077 .497** .283 .410* .227 .283 to apply to a university Correlation like this? Sig. (1-tailed) .351 .004 .076 .017 .127 .076 How likely would you be Pearson .010 .513** .338* .330* .217 .227 to attend a university like Correlation this? Sig. (1-tailed) .480 .003 .039 .043 .133 .123 Note. N=27 in sixth row; N=28 in all other rows. *p<.05 **p<.01 74
Table 15 Correlations of Attraction to Dry Campus with Attitudes Toward Alcohol Use and Partying
I believe partying in I believe I plan to I believe most I plan to I plan to get college is important most college attend parties college drink drunk to having a good students often when I students drink alcohol in sometimes social life party am in college alcohol college in college How would you rate your Pearson -.355* -.142 -.551** -.259 -.488** -.512** overall perception of this Correlation university? Sig. (1-tailed) .041 .250 .002 .106 .007 .004 How do you think most Pearson -.150 .036 -.099 .020 -.096 .017 high schools students Correlation would view this Sig. (1-tailed) .237 .433 .319 .462 .323 .468 university? How do you think your Pearson -.498** -.513** -.557** -.465** -.475** -.424* friends would view this Correlation university? Sig. (1-tailed) .006 .004 .002 .010 .008 .017 To what extent does this Pearson -.370* -.161 -.510** -.418* -.695** -.640** description match what Correlation you’re looking for in a Sig. (1-tailed) .034 .220 .005 .019 .000 .000 university? How likely would you be Pearson -.284 -.386* -.480** -.073 -.499** -.563** to make a campus visit Correlation to a university like this? Sig. (1-tailed) .084 .028 .008 .365 .006 .002 How likely would you be Pearson -.366* -.416* -.566** -.200 -.635** -.640** to apply to a university Correlation like this? Sig. (1-tailed) .036 .019 .002 .169 .000 .000 How likely would you be Pearson -.429* -.206 -.489** -.249 -.654** -.602** to attend a university like Correlation this? Sig. (1-tailed) .016 .162 .007 .115 .000 .001 Note. N=25 in all cases. *p<.05 **p<.0 75 the most attractive university. Another one-way ANCOVA replacing friends’ attraction with other high school students’ attraction found that other students’ attraction was significantly related to one’s own attraction (F(1,104) = 13.326, p<.001) and university description affected attraction (F(3,104) = 8.329, p<.001) with a similar ranking of universities to the previous ANCOVA.
When the effect of both items is statistically controlled, only friends’
attraction significantly influences one’s own attraction (F(1,103) = 43.667,
p<.001); not surprisingly, what one perceives one’s friends to think has a greater
influence than what one perceives the average high school student to think.
Again, the dry campus is ranked highest, followed by the university with many activities and strong enforcement, the university with many activities and little enforcement, and finally the party school.
Table 16 compares the mean attraction score using the seven-item
measure of attraction, the five-item measure of attraction (without the items of
high school students’ and friends’ attraction), and the five-item measure of
attraction when statistically controlling these items.
76
Table 16 Mean Attraction Scores Controlling for Social Influence
7-item 5-item 5-item 5-item measure 5-item measure measure measure measure controlling for controlling for controlling for perceptions of perceptions of perceptions of other high school friends and other friends’ students’ high school attraction attraction students’ attraction Party school 26.6774 17.4839 17.835 16.878 17.642 Many activities, 30.0769 19.8462 19.067 17.863 18.564 little enforcement Many activities, 34.4815 24.7407 23.019 24.374 23.030 strong enforcement Dry campus 29.8000 23.0800 25.315 26.290 26.065
77
Discussion
The questions that this phase of research sought to answer were What
kind of message(s) attracts a high concentration of heavy-drinking students? and
What kind of message(s) could help universities attract a more diverse set of
students who use alcohol in a moderate, responsible manner?
The two hypothetical universities at which a first-year student can easily
obtain alcohol and is unlikely to face consequences for underage drinking are
most attractive to those students who have the strongest intentions to party,
drink, and get drunk in college. These universities also consistently have the
overall lowest attraction scores. This would suggest that a university with a
reputation for allowing students to drink underage will primarily attract
prospective students who arrive on campus with plans to party. Given the high
correlation between attitudes and behaviors found in Study 2, the students
attracted to these kinds of schools are also most likely to bring with them
experience drinking alcohol. Prospective students who don’t plan to party, drink,
or get drunk in college are much less likely to be attracted to universities with this
kind of reputation.
The notion of reputation is key here; this is not to say that every university
at which students drink underage is going to attract only students with strong
positive attitudes toward partying and alcohol. (This would be highly unrealistic
given the pervasiveness of underage drinking across the country.) As outlined by
the theory of symbolic interactionism, a prospective student’s image of a possible
school choice will be shaped by the messages he or she receives about the
78 school. Thus it is only to the extent that students receive messages about alcohol use and partying at a particular university, such as messages that the school does not enforce drinking age laws, that their attraction to that particular university will be affected.
What image should a university attempt to adopt, then, to be most successful in attracting a safe student body? This question is a bit more difficult to answer. Consider first the dry campus; it is significantly more attractive to those with a low PEAI score (those with strong intentions not to party, drink, or get drunk in college) than to those with a high PEAI score, with those with a medium score somewhere in the middle. Its attraction does not seem to be limited to nondrinkers, given that it generally scored high on attraction even though about half of the participants had medium PEAI scores. The difficulty is that students perceive their friends and peers as viewing a university with a dry campus quite negatively, and this perception appears to influence their own attraction. It’s impossible to tell how this would play out for a prospective student when this factor (campus alcohol use) is considered alongside other factors; because students do not always follow a logical decision-making process, the opinions of other high school students, particularly their friends, could lead some students to decide against attending a dry campus even if they are otherwise attracted to the school.
Looking at the Pearson correlations for each university, the lack of a relationship between alcohol attitudes and attraction to the university with many activities and strong law enforcement indicates that both students with positive
79 attitudes toward alcohol use and partying and those with negative attitudes view this university similarly. The fact that this university ranked as most attractive overall implies that most students are attracted to this type of university, regardless of their beliefs and intentions about alcohol use and partying, whereas attraction to the other universities is mediated by one’s attitudes. It can be
tentatively concluded that, all else being equal, a university or college would be
able to attract the most students (as opposed to being limited to primarily
attracting students with positive or negative attitudes toward alcohol use and
partying) with messages focused on a variety of weekend activities and strong
enforcement of laws against underage drinking, recognizing that this factor is
only one of many that influence a prospective student’s decision.
Limitations. This study, while examining a factor in college choice rarely
considered, still focuses on only one factor in isolation. While messages about
alcohol use and partying at a university clearly have the potential to affect a
prospective student’s view of that university, it is impossible to say with certainty
how these messages will play into that student’s final decision. The strength of a
message’s effect may also depend on its source; the way messages were
received in this study was not representative of the word-of-mouth sources through which students reporting receiving information about alcohol use and partying in Study 1.
This study employed four different descriptions of universities in drawing the distinctions outlined above in an attempt to see the influence of different variables on a university’s attractiveness. This is not to say that any one
80 university should fit clearly into one of the four categories. There is likely much greater variation in how individuals talk about alcohol use and partying at different universities. Messages about alcohol use and partying may also be intertwined with other messages about a university, as the messages about
partying at UD are interwoven with the messages about UD being a “community.”
As with the first two studies, this study was confined to one geographic
area. Some of the findings may not be generalizable to other parts of the United
States or to higher education in other countries. Further research is encouraged
to attempt to replicate these findings in other areas.
The sample size for this study, which only permitted 25-30 participants to
receive any given message, may also limit the generalizability of the findings.
The strength of the differences and relationships these data produced, however,
indicate that they would likely hold up in a larger data set.
81
CONCLUSION
Regardless of what university administrators may wish to believe, prospective students receive a lot of information about universities from word-of-
mouth sources, including what the party scene is like at the universities in which
they are interested. For a university with a party school reputation, this is likely to
lead to a perpetuation of the party culture as students with the intention to drink
heavily are strongly attracted to such a school while those with no such intentions
are turned off. While these messages are by no means the only factors that go
into a prospective student’s college choice decision, their role cannot be
overlooked. As explained by the theory of symbolic interactionism, these
messages contribute to the shaping of a prospective student’s view of a
university, and it is this view that will eventually determine whether that student
applies to and then enrolls in the university.
Thus the party culture at a university is not rooted solely in the students
who are enrolled at any given time, but rather in the much larger reputation of the
school. Attempts to curb binge drinking among students are not going to be
successful as long as each new wave of students includes a high concentration
of individuals wanting to party hard. Having a safer campus does not require attracting only those students who have no intention to drink or party; it requires
82 only that a university avoid attracting primarily party- and alcohol-oriented students.
If there are more students who drink moderately or not at all, then the campus norm will shift such that not drinking will be a more acceptable choice and students who base their drinking on what they see others doing will have more responsible models to imitate.
The good news is that this research indicates this is possible: Schools with strong enforcement of alcohol laws, whether that be laws prohibiting those under
21 from drinking or campus rules proscribing any alcohol on the grounds, appear to not only attract a wider variety of students, but to be overall more attractive, than schools with lax enforcement. At a school with a long history of a party reputation, administrators may avoid stronger enforcement for fear of an alumni uproar that could lead to a decrease in applications from alumni relatives. Even if this were to happen, these results indicate that the university may end up attracting far more students than it did in the first place.
The data do not provide a clear explanation of why certain hypothetical schools were most attractive, but the attraction to schools with strong enforcement may indicate a desire for clear boundaries. With so much uncertainty involved in moving on to a higher level of education and often in living in a new place as well, students may want to know exactly what to expect in terms of a university’s stance on underage alcohol use. For prospective students who do not have strong intentions to party and use alcohol, they may see strong enforcement as a way to avoid peer pressure to drink underage. The fact that
83 students with a high PEAI score were significantly more attracted to any university than students with a low PEAI score could indicate that they plan to drink as first-year students regardless of the university’s rules, so these rules
have less of an effect on attraction than they do for those without a strong
intention to drink and party.
There is also the issue of weekend campus activities. For the party school,
weekend activities for students comprised only parties with alcohol, while for the
other schools there was a greater variety of activities. (For the dry campus, no activities included alcohol except if one wanted to go to a bar away from campus.) This may be one reason the party school was consistently ranked last
on attractiveness: It appears to offer nothing for those students not interested in
the party scene or not interested enough to party every weekend. While
promoting weekend activities is not in itself enough to attract a wider variety of
students (given that there was no significant difference between attraction to the
party school and attraction to the school with many activities but little law
enforcement), it is unwise for university administrators to crack down on parties
without also providing and promoting a variety of alternative weekend events for
students living on or near campus.
The problem of dangerous alcohol consumption on college campuses is
not insurmountable, but it does require a broad enough view to accurately
address the situation. A university with a binge drinking problem needs to look
beyond its campus borders at the messages that are being sent to prospective
students, and then assess what can be done both internally and externally to
84 shape those messages. This will make the campus a safer place for current and future students, and it may even lead to increased enrollment for the university.
85
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APPENDIX A: Study 1 Interview Guide
Preliminary questions to select relevant question set:
Prior to applying to UD, did you know any alumni or current students at UD?
Did you have an overnight visit before deciding to come to UD?
For people who knew alumni or current students:
1) Who do you know that attended or currently attends UD?
2) Based on what [alum] told you about his/her time at UD, what were the top
three ways that he/she spent his/her time while at UD?
3) What other sources did you consult when looking for information about UD
during your college search process?
4a) Did [alum] mention the parties in the student neighborhood at UD?
4b) During your college search process, did you discover any [other] information about parties in the student neighborhood at UD? Where did you find this information?
a) How were these parties at UD described?
b) Would you say that what you heard about parties increased or decreased
your desire to attend UD, if either? Why?
90
c) Did [alum] talk about Public Safety’s involvement in the student
neighborhood during parties?
d) During your college search process, did you discover any [other]
information about Public Safety’s involvement in the student neighborhood
during parties? Where did you find this information?
i) Did this description of Public Safety increase or decrease your desire
to attend UD, if either? Why?
e) If no to both: If you had known before applying to UD what you know now
of parties in UD’s student neighborhoods, would this have increased or
decreased your desire to attend UD, if either? Why?
5a) Did [alum] mention that there was a Pub in the student union?
5b) During your college search process, did you discover any [other] information about the presence of a Pub in the student union? Where did you find this information?
a) Was the presence of a Pub described in a positive way or a negative way?
Why positive/negative?
b) Did the presence of a Pub increase or decrease your desire to attend UD,
if either? Why?
6) During your college search process, did you hear or see the word
“community” used in conjunction with UD?
a) Where did you hear or see this word?
b) What were some examples given to support the idea of UD as a
community, if any?
91
c) Did the description of UD as a community increase or decrease your
desire to attend UD, if either? Why?
7) During your college search process, did you hear or see the phrase “party
school” used in conjunction with UD?
a) Where did you hear or see this phrase?
b) What were some examples given to support the idea of UD as a party
school, if any?
c) Did the description of UD as a party school increase or decrease your
desire to attend UD, if either? Why?
8) Were any of your high school friends or classmates that you knew well also
looking at UD?
a) Did any end up coming here?
b) Did you have discussions with your friends or classmates about
alcohol or partying at UD?
i) What did you discuss?
ii) Did your friends or classmates have any views different from you about
alcohol or partying at UD?
9) When you told your high school friends that you planned to attend UD, what
kind of reactions did you get?
10) What kind of things did you tell your friends about why you were attending
UD?
11) When you told adults that you planned to attend UD, what kind of reactions
did you get?
92
12) What kind of things did you tell adults about why you were attending UD?
13) How would you describe UD to a prospective student?
For other people:
1) What sources did you consult when looking for information about UD during
your college search process?
2) During your college search process, did you discover any information about
parties in the student neighborhood at UD?
a) Where did you find this information?
b) How were these parties at UD described?
c) Would you say that this description of parties increased or decreased your
desire to attend UD, if either? Why?
d) During your college search process, did you discover any information
about Public Safety’s involvement in the student neighborhood during
parties?
i) Did this description of Public Safety increase or decrease your desire
to attend UD, if either? Why?
e) If no: If you had known before applying to UD what you know now of
parties in UD’s student neighborhoods, would this have increased or
decreased your desire to attend UD, if either? Why?
3) Did you discover any information during your college search process about
the presence of a Pub in the student union?
a) Where did you find this information?
93
b) Was the presence of a Pub described in a positive way or a negative way?
Why positive/negative?
c) Did the presence of a Pub increase or decrease your desire to attend UD,
if either? Why?
4) During your college search process, did you hear or see the word
“community” used in conjunction with UD?
a) Where did you hear or see this word?
b) What were some examples given to support the idea of UD as a
community, if any?
c) Did the description of UD as a community increase or decrease your
desire to attend UD, if either? Why?
5) During your college search process, did you hear or see the phrase “party
school” used in conjunction with UD?
a) Where did you hear or see this phrase?
b) What were some examples given to support the idea of UD as a party
school?
c) Did the description of UD as a party school increase or decrease your
desire to attend UD, if either? Why?
6) Were any of your high school friends or classmates that you knew well also
looking at UD?
a) Did any end up coming here?
b) Did you have discussions with your friends or classmates about alcohol or
partying at UD?
94
i) What did you discuss?
ii) Did your friends or classmates have any views different from you about
alcohol or partying at UD?
7) When you told your high school friends that you planned to attend UD, what
kind of reactions did you get?
8) What kind of things did you tell your friends about why you were attending
UD?
9) When you told adults that you planned to attend UD, what kind of reactions
did you get?
10) What kind of things did you tell adults about why you were attending UD?
11) How would you describe UD to a prospective student?
95
APPENDIX B: Study 2 Survey
Demographics Gender identity: M F
Hometown: In Ohio Outside Ohio
Enrollment status: Full-time student Part-time student
First-year residential status: University housing resident Commuter
Year in school: First Second Third Fourth Fifth+
Pre-Existing Attitudes For this set of questions, please reflect on the two years before you first began school at UD. For many people, this will correspond to junior and senior year of high school. Select the degree to which you agree or disagree with the statements that follow about your attitudes during this time period.
During the two years before attending UD, I believed partying was important to having a good social life.
5 4 3 2 1 Strongly Strongly Agree Disagree
During the two years before attending UD, I believed most college students partied.
5 4 3 2 1 Strongly Strongly Agree Disagree
96
During the two years before attending UD, I planned to attend parties often when I was in college.
5 4 3 2 1 Strongly Strongly Agree Disagree
During the two years before attending UD, I believed most college students drank alcohol.
5 4 3 2 1 Strongly Strongly Agree Disagree
During the two years before attending UD, I planned to drink alcohol in college.
5 4 3 2 1 Strongly Strongly Agree Disagree
During the two years before attending UD, I planned to get drunk sometimes in college.
5 4 3 2 1 Strongly Strongly Agree Disagree
Pre-Existing Behaviors For this set of questions, please reflect on the two years before you first began school at UD. For many people, this will correspond to junior and senior year of high school. Remember that your responses are confidential, and your honesty is appreciated. You are not obligated to answer any question that you feel uncomfortable answering.
During the two years before attending UD . . . I attended parties where alcohol was present:
Never Less than once a month About once a month
2-3 times a month 4 or more times a month
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During the two years before attending UD . . . On occasions when I consumed alcohol, I had, on average, this number of drinks (If you did not drink alcohol during this time period, please enter 00): (One drink is calculated as 12 oz. beer, 4 oz. wine, 1.25 oz. 80-proof liquor, 10 oz. wine cooler, 10 oz. microbrew, or 8 oz. malt liquor or ice beer) ___
During the two years before attending UD . . . On occasions when I consumed alcohol, I got drunk. ___ Yes, frequently ___ Yes, occasionally ___ Yes, but only once or twice ___ No ___ I did not drink during this time period
During the two years before attending UD . . . On occasions when I consumed alcohol, I blacked out (could not remember what had happened). ___ Yes, frequently ___ Yes, occasionally ___ Yes, but only once or twice ___ No ___ I did not drink during this time period
Messages Received For this set of questions, please reflect on the period from the time you began looking for information about colleges to the time that you decided to attend UD.
You will be asked whether you received certain messages about UD during this time period. This should not reflect any opinions you may have formed about UD since enrolling here.
You will then be asked to rate the effect each message had on your perception of UD. You only need to answer this question if you indicated that you had received the message.
I received the message: “UD is a community.” ___ Yes, I heard this frequently. ___ Yes, I heard this once or twice. ___ I did not hear this message, but it was implied through stories or other evidence. ___ No ___ I received only a contrary message, such as “UD is not a community.”
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If yes: How did this affect your perception of UD? It made my perception:
More negative 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 More positive
I received the message: “UD has a lot of parties.” ___ Yes, I heard this frequently. ___ Yes, I heard this once or twice. ___ I did not hear this message, but it was implied through stories or other evidence. ___ No ___ I received only a contrary message, such as “UD does not have a lot of parties.”
If yes: How did this affect your perception of UD? It made my perception:
More negative 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 More positive
I received the message: “It is easy to obtain alcohol as a first-year student at UD.” ___ Yes, I heard this frequently. ___ Yes, I heard this once or twice. ___ I did not hear this message, but it was implied through stories or other evidence. ___ No ___ I received only a contrary message, such as “It is difficult to obtain alcohol as a first-year student at UD.”
If yes: How did this affect your perception of UD? It made my perception:
More negative 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 More positive
I received the message: “The police do not prevent underage drinking at UD.” ___ Yes, I heard this frequently. ___ Yes, I heard this once or twice. ___ I did not hear this message, but it was implied through stories or other evidence. ___ No ___ I received only a contrary message, such as “The police prevent underage drinking at UD.”
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If yes: How did this affect your perception of UD? It made my perception:
More negative 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 More positive
I received the message: “Most students at UD party on the weekends.” ___ Yes, I heard this frequently. ___ Yes, I heard this once or twice. ___ I did not hear this message, but it was implied through stories or other evidence. ___ No ___ I received only a contrary message, such as “Most students at UD do not party on the weekends.”
If yes: How did this affect your perception of UD? It made my perception:
More negative 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 More positive
I received the message: “Parties at UD are crazy.” ___ Yes, I heard this frequently. ___ Yes, I heard this once or twice. ___ I did not hear this message, but it was implied through stories or other evidence. ___ No ___ I received only a contrary message, such as “Parties at UD are not crazy.”
If yes: How did this affect your perception of UD? It made my perception:
More negative 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 More positive
I received the message: “UD students know how to balance schoolwork and partying.” ___ Yes, I heard this frequently. ___ Yes, I heard this once or twice. ___ I did not hear this message, but it was implied through stories or other evidence. ___ No ___ I received only a contrary message, such as “UD students do not know how to balance schoolwork and partying.”
If yes: How did this affect your perception of UD? It made my perception:
More negative 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 More positive
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I received the message: “UD is a party school.” ___ Yes, I heard this frequently. ___ Yes, I heard this once or twice. ___ I did not hear this message, but it was implied through stories or other evidence. ___ No ___ I received only a contrary message, such as “UD is not a party school.”
If yes: How did this affect your perception of UD? It made my perception:
More negative 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 More positive
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APPENDIX C: Study 3 Survey
Gender identity: M F
Which do you consider yourself? Catholic Protestant Neither
Which best describes you regarding athletics? Choose one. ___ I have been strongly involved in athletics and played multiple sports throughout high school. ___ I have been consistently involved in one sport throughout high school. ___ I have been on athletic teams occasionally throughout high school. ___ I have been on an athletic team once or twice while in high school. ___ I have not been involved in organized sports while in high school.
Which best describes you regarding extracurricular activities other than sports? Choose one. ___ I have been strongly involved in multiple extracurricular activities throughout high school. ___ I have been consistently involved in one extracurricular activity throughout high school. ___ I have been briefly involved in different extracurricular activities while in high school. ___ I have had little involvement in extracurricular activities while in high school.
Which best describes you regarding community volunteer work? Choose one. ___ I have done unpaid volunteer work on an ongoing basis while in high school. ___ I have done unpaid volunteer work occasionally throughout high school. ___ I have done unpaid volunteer work once or twice while in high school. ___ I have never done unpaid volunteer work while in high school.
Which describes your paid work while in high school? Choose one. ___ I have held one or more part-time jobs for more than two years while in high school. ___ I have held one or more part-time jobs for one to two years while in high school. ___ I have held one or more part-time jobs for less than a year while in high school. ___ I have worked for pay while in high school, but not on a regular basis. ___ I have not worked for pay while in high school.
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Approximate GPA: ___ 3.6 or above ___ 3.1 to 3.5 ___ 2.6 to 3.0 ___ 2.1 to 2.5 ___ 1.6 to 2.0 ___ 1.5 or below
Select the degree to which you agree or disagree with the statements that follow by circling a number.
I believe partying in college is important to having a good social life.
5 4 3 2 1 Strongly Strongly Agree Disagree
I believe most college students party.
5 4 3 2 1 Strongly Strongly Agree Disagree
I plan to attend parties often when I am in college.
5 4 3 2 1 Strongly Strongly Agree Disagree
I do not plan to attend college.
I believe most college students drink alcohol.
5 4 3 2 1 Strongly Strongly Agree Disagree
I plan to drink alcohol in college.
5 4 3 2 1 Strongly Strongly Agree Disagree
I do not plan to attend college.
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I plan to get drunk sometimes in college.
5 4 3 2 1 Strongly Strongly Agree Disagree
I do not plan to attend college.
What follows is a description of a university. Please read the description and then answer the questions that follow.
[Students received one of four descriptions:]
Most people say this university is a party school. Most of the students drink alcohol on the weekends at crazy parties full of many people. There is not much else to do on the weekends. As a first-year student, it is easy to obtain alcohol and you probably won’t get caught drinking underage. You are welcome to attend parties where you don’t know anyone and get alcohol for free. Students work hard at their schoolwork during the week and then drink a lot of alcohol on the weekends.
There are a lot of things to do on the weekends at this school. Some students choose to drink alcohol at parties with many people, while other students attend parties with many people where there is no alcohol. There are also a lot of on- campus activities on weekend nights and transportation is available to local events. As a first-year student, it is easy to obtain alcohol and you probably won’t get caught drinking underage. You are welcome to attend parties where you don’t know anyone and get alcohol for free. Students work hard at their schoolwork during the week and then relax in various ways during the weekend.
There are a lot of things to do on the weekends at this school. Some students choose to drink alcohol at parties with many people, while other students attend parties with many people where there is no alcohol. There are also a lot of on- campus activities on weekend nights and transportation is available to local events. It is difficult to obtain alcohol if you are under 21 and you will face tough consequences if you are caught drinking underage; students 21 and over are encouraged to use alcohol responsibly. Students work hard at their schoolwork during the week and then relax in various ways during the weekend.
This university has a dry campus. There is no alcohol allowed anywhere on the campus grounds or in any university-owned housing, regardless of the age of the person possessing it. Students trying to bring alcohol onto campus are usually caught and face tough consequences. There are a lot of on-campus activities on weekend nights and transportation is available to local events. Students over 21 wanting to drink alcohol typically go to bars off campus. Students work hard at
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How would you rate your overall perception of this university?
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Negative Positive
How do you think most high school students would view this university?
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Negative Positive
How do you think your friends would view this university?
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Negative Positive
To what extent does this description match what you’re looking for in a college or university?
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Doesn’t Matches Match at All Exactly
I do not plan to attend college.
How likely would you be to make a campus visit to a university like this?
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Very Very Unlikely Likely
I do not plan to attend college.
How likely would you be to apply to a university like this?
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Very Very Unlikely Likely
I do not plan to attend college.
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How likely would you be to attend a university like this?
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Very Very Unlikely Likely
I do not plan to attend college.
Please list any colleges or universities below that you are currently interested in attending:
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