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A very important and significant topic in psychological research is alcohol and its effects on the psychological being. A population that is especially susceptible to alcohol-related issues are college students. It has been reported that nowadays, college students are drinking at very high rates. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism found that according to a national survey, almost 60 percent of college students ages 18–22 drank alcohol in the past month, and almost 2 out of 3 of them engaged in binge drinking during that same timeframe (2005).
Knight et al found that many college students report behaviors or symptoms that meet the diagnostic standard for alcohol abuse or dependence. Additionally, 31% of students endorsed criteria for an alcohol abuse diagnostic (2002).
It may seem evident that college students are particularly vulnerable to alcohol abuse because of the immense academic stress they are placed under. However, there is a factor at play that may complicate this direct relationship: anxiety. Academic stress causes college students to experience anxiety at high levels.
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Alcohol can feel like an easy escape, so to speak, from college student’s anxieties. Students with can use alcohol to cope with anxiety (DeMartini and Carey, 2011). Thus, when college students experience high levels of anxiety, this causes them to drink a lot more, which can lead to a higher rate of blackouts.
This study examines the effects of academic stress on blackouts amongst college students. Specifically, the aim of this study is to examine what role anxiety plays in the relationship between academic stress and alcohol- related blackouts among college age students in New York City.
The study firstly hypothesizes that academic stress is positively associated with rates of alcohol-related blackouts among college students. The second hypothesis is that academic stress is positively associated with anxiety symptoms among college students. The third hypothesis is that anxiety symptoms are positively associated with rates of alcohol-related blackouts.
College students can very easily feel anxious trying to juggle school, work, friends and family. Anne Marie Albano, in an article in the Future of Personal Health, notes that 40 to 60 percent of college students suffer from anxiety (n.d). Furthermore, Penn’s Center for Collegiate Mental Health conducted a study of more than 100,000 college students. They found that more than half of the students visiting campus health clinics listed anxiety as one of their concerns. This finding stemmed from the American College Health Association (ACHA), who conducted a National College Health Assessment survey in 2015, which found that almost one in six college students (15.8 percent) was diagnosed with, or treated for, anxiety. The survey also found that 21.9 percent of students said than within the last 12 months, anxiety affected their academic performance. This means that they received a lower grade on an exam or important project, received an incomplete, or dropped a course (2007).
Moreover, in addition to anxiety amongst college students, another issue of grave concern is alcohol-induced blackouts. Alcohol-induced blackouts can be described as memory loss for an episode of drinking without losing consciousness. There are two kinds of blackouts. First, en bloc blackouts, which can be defined as memory loss for all events that happen during a distinct period of time and usually happen at high Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) levels. Fragmentary blackouts, on the other hand, are partial memory loss episodes that can be resolved with contextual clues. Fragmentary blackouts happen more commonly than en bloc blackouts (Wetherill and Fromme, 2016). Jellinek (1952) popularized the notion that blackouts are a crucial predictor of alcoholism. He concludes this because of data suggesting that blackouts occur early on in alcoholism, way before other alcoholism symptoms appear.
College students are vulnerable to alcohol abuse because of the immense academic stress they are placed under, with the difficultly of homework and exams. College is a stressful time for many students as they go through the process of adapting to new educational and social environments (Misra and Castillo, 2004). There may be an increased probability that students become depressed or anxious, causing them to drink a great amount of alcohol when given the chance. Alcohol policies should be reviewed and in addition, prevention programs should be initiated in the high-risk settings of colleges (Karam et al, 2007). Given the above-mentioned associations between academic stress and anxiety symptoms, it is expected that college students will experience greater anxiety when they are under academic stress. Similarly, it is expected that college students will drink higher quantities of alcohol when they are in a state of anxiety, usually occurring because of academic stress. The present study will examine these associations among college students.
This phenomenon has yet to be studied in the population I plan to research. Previous research has examined the drinking rates of college students. Studies have also been conducted to examine the anxiety levels among college students. Studies have also been conducted to examine how anxiety is correlated with alcohol drinking. Studies have found that social anxiety may be an important motivator for drinking in college students (Burke & Stephens, 1999). This study will relate the anxiety that comes along with academic stress to the likelihood of blacking out.
This study is unique in that it tracks a specific kind of alcohol abuse, blackouts. Research has indeed been done on College Greek life student’s self-reporting of binge drinking. Previous research has found that these students have more alcohol-related problems than students who are not a part of Greek life (Brown-Rice & Furr, 2015). This research extends that to blackouts due to drinking alcohol. This research is extremely important, as research from the University at Buffalo Department of psychology has discovered that college students who drink with the intent of coping with anxiety might have many more negative alcohol-related issues than students who drink for different reasons (Donovan, 2013).
In this research, the population that will be studied is a sample of thirty fraternity and sorority New York University students (fifteen male). There will be an e-mail sent out to their list-serve recruiting participants. The benefit of participating in this study is that the participant’s will receive two credits for participating in this study. The participants must have at least a 3.5 GPA, to ensure that they care about their academic performance, and invest time into their studies. The study will exclude students who actually possess a diagnosed alcohol-abuse disorder. The students recruited will be ages 21-22, above the legal drinking age, so mainly juniors and seniors in college.
This study will be a within-group design, being that the same individuals will be examined twice. The same group will be studied during two periods of time. First, they will be studied during the beginning of school, when academic stress is not in full swing. School is just starting off, and most college students do not have a heavy workload yet. Second, they will be studied during Midterm season, when academic stress is at an all time high. Participants will track their alcohol drinking and blackouts using a self- report questionnaire survery that will be e-mailed to them every weekend, which is the most common time for college drinking. They will complete the survey on a computer. They will report how much they drank and questions on their memory of the night. The questions will be closed questions instead of open-ended questions because they may result in a better coverage of drinking (Lintonen, 2004). On the computer, they will also fill out the Beck Anxeity Inventory (Beck and Steer, 1993) in the same sitting that they fill out the report of their alcohol consumption. The Beck Anxiety inventory is a self-report measure of anxiety that contains 21 questions on potential symptoms of anxiety. Individuals rate how much they have been bothered by the symptom on a scale from “Not at all” to “Severely-it bothered me a lot.” Symptoms include fear of dying, hands trembling, and unable to relax.
In addition to the Beck Anxiety Inventory and the self-report measure of drinking, the participants will have one two in-person interviews during each point of the semester, one at the beginning of the semester and one at the end. The interviewers will speak to the participants about the specifics of their blackouts, and fill in any details that may have been left out on the survey. The interviewers will also ask them about their academic stress: their exams, their grades, and the pressure put on them by external and internal forces.
There are no risks for participant’s in this study. Participants will be warned of the dangers of alcohol abuse before the study begins. They are not encouraged in any way to drink more than they usually would during this study. Once the study is finished, The Beck Anxiety Inventory score will be analyzed along with the self-report survey of the amount of times one blacked out. These scores will be studied along with the in-person interview conducted by the researcher. A potential risk of this study is an invasion of privacy of one’s personal life, but the participants will have all signed confidentiality waivers beforehand. The participants will be warned about the purpose of the research, the duration and the procedures.
This study evaluates the effect of academic stress on college students’ blackout rates, and the role that anxiety plays in this relationship. The research’s first hypothesis is that a large amount of academic stress leads to student’s tendency to drink more and blackout. The second hypothesis is that academic stress leads to high levels of anxiety amongst college students. The final hypothesis is that since students experience a lot of anxiety, they are more likely to drink a lot more than normal, and consequently blackout.
Academic Stress and Blackouts. (2021, Dec 17). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/academic-stress-and-blackouts-essay
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