As students finish up their final exams, sell back their books and prepare for the long winter break, chances are a few of them will take part in another semester-ending ritual - drinking.
According to a study conducted by the Olin Health Department, the Department of Communication and the Institute for Public Policy & Social Research in 2002, more than 24 percent of students will drink an average 6.2 drinks in celebration of the end of the semester.
The study is part of a three-year, $300,000 research project funded by a grant from the Social Norm Research Center to identify whether celebratory drinking is truly a phenomenon on college campuses.
Celebration drinking is drinking that involves occasions where there is a climate encouraging students to drink, to drink in excess. Some of these occasions include Welcome Week, Halloween, St. Patrick's Day and football Saturdays.
"We're trying to measure what happens on these days and if there is education that we need to do to help people," said Olin Health educator Dennis Martell, the principle investigator in the study.
The 2002 study administered to 1,162 MSU students reported that more than 46 percent of students drink during a typical week.
Of the MSU students who reported drinking for the end of the semester, 55 percent reported getting drunk.
"What our research is showing is that celebratory drinking is an issue we have to address," Martell said.
A new survey is being conducted by the Office for Survey Research that compliments the 2002 study. This web survey, which will include about 900 students, will go more in-depth on specific celebratory occasions and public perceptions of drinking, said Larry Hembroff, survey director at the Office for Survey Research at the Institute for Public Policy & Social Research.
"Part of what we're trying to do is get an idea of what people perceive to be the case and what actually is the case," Hembroff said.
The Office for Survey Research has placed a series of ads in The State News that inform students of facts that might not be known, Hembroff said.
