Hazardous Drinking and Sexual Assault Essay -- Social Issues, College

Heavy drinking among college students has been a problem and studies have indicated this for several years (Turrisi, Mallett, Mastroleo, & Larimer, 2006). This topic continues to be a crucial subject of study. Hingson, Heeren, Zakocs, Kopstein, and Wechsler (2002) suggest that approximately 1,400 college students between 18 and 24 passed away in 1998 from alcohol related injuries. Hingson et al. found 112,000 arrests among college students aged 18 to 24 in 1999 for alcohol related crimes. Hingson et al. also reported 630,000 assaults of students between the ages of 18 and 24, 400,000 students had unprotected sex due to drinking, and there were 70,000 victims of sexual assault. Hingson et al.’s study used records held by the Center for Disease Control on the number of unintentional injury deaths, motor vehicle deaths recorded by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and medical examiner research to determine their numbers. Three surveys of college students determi ned the numbers of college student deaths in the study. Hingson et al. used the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse which surveyed 6,930 college students between the ages of 18 and 24 across the U.S. Another survey used in the study was the National College Health Risk Behavior Survey in which 3,077 students in 136 colleges across the U.S. participated. The third survey used by Hingson et al. was the Harvard School of Public Health Alcohol College Survey that surveyed students from different colleges in 1993, 1997, and 1999. In 1999 12,317 students from these colleges covering 40 states participated. Hingson et al. mention a few reasons why their numbers might be conservative with one reason being social desirability. Another reason suggested by Hingson e... ...ion membership 7 (8.6%) of those who reported regretted sex under the influence in the past 12 months were greek organization members while 74 (91.4%) were not. We used a Mann-Whitney U test to compare the AUDIT scores of those who reported unwanted sex under the influence in the past 12 months with those who did not. There was a significant difference between those who reported unwanted sex under the influence in the past 12 months and those who did not (mean ranks=1416.53 versus 823.24; U=10992.50 p