Alcohol Alert
Indian Express
Indian Express
Teenage drinkers are more likely to feel
like social outcasts when surrounded by fellow students who tend to
avoid alcohol, which eventually affects their academic performances, a
new sociological study has revealed.
The study showed alcohol consumption
leads to increased social stress and poor grades, especially among
students in schools with tightly connected friendship cliques and low
levels of alcohol abuse.
For their study, Robert Crosnoe, a
professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, Aprile
Benner, an assistant professor of human ecology at the University of
Texas at Austin, and Barbara Schneider, a professor of sociology and
education at Michigan State University, analyzed National Longitudinal
Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) data on 8,271 adolescents from
126 schools.
Add Health, which began in 1994, is the
largest and most comprehensive survey of health-related behavior among
adolescents between grades 7 and 12.
The researchers, who also drew on Add
Health’s companion Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement transcript
study, found a correlation between drinking and feelings of loneliness
and not fitting in across all school environments.
But these feelings were especially
significant among self-reported drinkers in schools where fellow
students tended to avoid alcohol and were tightly connected to each
other.
When not surrounded by fellow drinkers,
they are more likely to feel like social outcasts, said Crosnoe, who,
along with Benner, is a research affiliate at the University of Texas at
Austin’s Population Research Center.
“This finding doesn’t imply that
drinkers would be better off in schools in which peer networks are
tightly organized around drinking. Instead, the results suggest that we
need to pay attention to youth in problematic school environments in
general but also to those who may have trouble in seemingly positive
school environments,” Crosnoe said...<http://www.indianexpress.com/
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