Educating Campus Community on Alcohol Safety and Awareness

Background

The focus of our Creative Inquiry is to educate students on safe drinking practices with an additional emphasis on bystander intervention. We conduct research through an interactive initiative called The Filling Station. The Filling Station is a portable bar dedicated to providing truthful and unbiased information about alcohol and its consumption. The bar design is a best practice used across the country to attract high-risk drinkers.

Method

Data was collected from the demonstrations, discussions, and games as well as demographic sheets the students who visited the Filling Station participated in. Observation sheets recorded the number of participants and their responses, and demographic sheets collected gender, age, class standing, alcohol consumption per week. Through effectively planning ways to observe students responses, the team obtained useful data about student’s knowledge of alcohol.

shots poured

Results

Trivia Questions (go with graph pictures above)- 

1. How long does it take your body to metabolize one drink? (Answer: 1 hour)

2. Moderate use (2-3) drinks can result in loss of motor coordination for how many hours after drinking? (Answer: 12-18 hours)

3. What number of drinks makes you a heavy drinker? (Answer: women- 3/day or 7/week; men- 4/day or 14/week)

Demographic Card Trends

  • On average, seniors drink 4 times more than freshman or sophomore students
  • On average, freshman stated that they drink 2-3 drinks per week
  • 23 out of the 39 females surveyed at the bar recorded 2 or more drinks per week.
  • 21 out of the 29 males surveyed at the bar recorded 2 or more drinks per week, with 9 consuming 6 or more drinks per week.

Conclusions

Overall, we felt the Filling Station was successful in obtaining participants for our research. Also, by using different locations on campus, we received a wider variety of the Clemson population. Participants were very engaged in our activities and were more receptive to alcohol safety and tips rather than alcohol abstinence. Altogether, we feel students are educated on how to accurately assess how many standard drinks are in a container, but lack the knowledge of how alcohol and other drugs may be affecting their body. For example, 81% of students responded incorrectly to the question of “how long does it take your body to metabolize one drink?” One improvement from last year has been the inclusion of bystander tips, because part of the population that engages with the Filling Station does not consume alcohol. For the future, our team will be researching other ways to engage the campus community in alcohol awareness and education initiatives that promote more bystander participation.