Where sex and drinking are thriving
December 1, 2009 by Geneva ReidPosted in: In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views, Student Life
Which students are most likely to have more sexual partners and take part in binge drinking? Hint: It doesn’t involve frats.
Students living in co-ed dorms are 2.5 times more likely to binge drink each week, according to a recent study in the Journal of American College Health. They also tend to have more sexual partners and use pornography more frequently.
Here are the numbers:
· In co-ed dorms, 42% of students said they engaged in binge drinking every week
· In same-gender housing, 18% of students engaged in binge drinking each week
Is this a case of which comes first, the chicken or the egg? In other words, do students drink more as a result of being in co-ed housing – or do students who tend to drink more choose to live in co-ed dorms?
Researchers for the study say the latter is true. When students apply for college housing, it’s assumed they’ll want to live in a co-ed dorm. Although they are given the choice of living in same-gender housing, few go that route.
What conclusions can you draw from the study? Let us know in the comments section below.
HigherEdMorning delivers the latest HigherEd news once a week to the inboxes of over 200,000 HigherEd professionals.
Click here to sign up and start your FREE subscription to HigherEdMorning!
Loading ...
December 3rd, 2009 at 2:56 pm
This does not surprise me. The constant pressure we all feel from those who push for more freedoms and abandonment of “old” straight-laced values of morality and decency has brought us to this point. All through history we see the same end result–let people do whatever they feel like doing and you’ll have lawlessness. A society without rules will eventually implode–collapsing from within. With this foreknowledge can you imagine who or what would behind the scenes push for our civilized society to abandon the proven standards of decency that made our country great? Who or what stands to gain from our country’s fall? The terrorists are not our enemy. The real enemy has infiltrated in a more organized clandestine way working hard to get the right support to change laws and policies that have destructive intent.
December 3rd, 2009 at 7:10 pm
I wonder if drinking were legal for them if they would go out to drink and do so in a more responsible manner? Maybe with laws, sometimes less is more.
December 4th, 2009 at 9:19 am
Many countries do not have your ““old” straight-laced values of morality and decency” but are very civilized. Perhaps an excessively moralistic view results in excessive behavior once the young adult is freed to make their own decisions.
December 4th, 2009 at 9:57 am
I can not get to the study directly – I did try to find the bases used.
Given a college (C1) with single-gender dorms – Population A, and coed dorm – Population B, we have a study comparing A vs B. Combining the groups as Population C, one should also compare C against other socially comparable colleges which have no choice in style of dorms – both ways. That is Compare C against colleges with all single-gender dorms and against colleges with all coed dorms (there are some).
Comparing environments where there are optional single-gender and coed dorms against each other merely states that the subset of those more prone to binge drinking and more active sexual actions will choose the coed dorm. Duh…
January 6th, 2010 at 2:09 pm
Oh please. One of the few things I remember from my college statistics course is “correlation does not imply causation.” My guess is living in coed dorms doesn’t make people more likely to binge drink but that more conservative students (who are more likely to be teetotalers) are more likely to choose same gender dorms.