Psychology, 5/e   Wortman, Loftus & Weaver
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Exploring Drinking Motivation

We commonly hear two reasons for why people drink alcoholic beverages. One is the social aspect of alcohol. We drink when we are with others-drinking is a universal social mixer. The other common reason is that we drink when we are depressed, when we are having difficulties coping with problems, or when we feel alone or socially isolated. This survey provides an opportunity to explore the relationships between drinking, sociability, and personal problems. The population to be surveyed, your college peers, is one that tends to experience extremes in three categories: that is, drinking is a popular pastime in college, college is a very sociable period for most, and the college student experiences many personal upheavals-from leaving home to failure in school, financial problems, love relationships, etc.

Experimental Procedure

You will need to enlist 10 willing respondents who drink alcoholic beverages and are willing to respond to items on the questionnaire that may seem a little personal. You must assure them that you will not put their names on their questionnaires and that you will share only the data. You will need 10 copies of the questionnaire.

STEP 1 Ask each respondent to complete the questionnaire. Collect the questionnaires and thank your subjects for their help.

Analyzing the Results

STEP 1 Record the value associated with each response in the appropriate position on Chart I. Note that the questionnaire items are grouped according to one of three factors-Drinking Behavior, Sociability, and Problems-and that the items related to each are dispersed throughout the questionnaire.

STEP 2 Calculate the index for each factor by computing an average score for each group. Total the values in the Drinking Behavior column and divide by 3 (3 items). Total the values in the Sociability column and divide by 7 (7 items). Total the values in the Problems column and divide by 9 (9 items).

STEP 3 Transfer to Chart II: Results the information about Age, College Standing, Grade Point Average, and Sex from the subjects' questionnaires.

STEP 4 Complete Chart II by transferring the three index values you calculated for each subject in Chart I: Data.

STEP 5 Turn to Part Two of the Results Chart and compute an average Drinking Index, Sociability Index, and Problem Index for the male subjects in your sample. (Remember, the mean here is the sum of all the index scores for the male subjects divided by the number of male subjects.)

Do the same computation for your female subjects.

STEP 6 Compute the remainder of the averages called for in the table in similar fashion.

Discussion

What relationships can you see between sociability, problems, and drinking behavior? For the people you surveyed, what were the more frequently related indexes? If someone is high in sociability and problems, did they also tend to drink more? Do your data suggest that drinking is motivated by sociability and/or problems? Did anyone score high in drinking and low in both sociability and problems? Do these correlations suggest any motivational connection?

There may be responses to certain questions that have a strong correlation to all three indexes. Question 8, for instance, may suggest that a person may have a number of problems and escape them through highly sociable behavior. Thus, you may ask how often someone scoring 5 or 4 on item 8 had a high sociability and problem index and drinks frequently. Note that question 24 was not tallied. Its purpose is to give an indication of how often someone drinks (it should not be used on the Drinking Index because some people may drink every day and never get drunk-wine with supper, a beer after a walk-whereas others may have only one drink every two weeks but be totally inebriated). Does frequency alone appear to be related to any of the indexes? Do you see parallels between Schachter's theory and the exercise here? Do the people you surveyed all drink for the same reasons? Or do some of your subjects appear to drink because they have problems and others drink because they want to be social?

What conclusions can you draw from this survey about why college students drink? Does this conclusion support your original ideas on this subject? How could this study be improved if you were to do it again?

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