Binge Drinking (Final) Essays - HIVAIDS, Prevention Of HIVAIDS

Binge Drinking (Final) Drinking has become an increasing problem in our society. Many people now see drinking as a norm. Lisa McIntyre, author of The Practical Skeptic states that, For one thing, we know that norms vary across societies (152). So we also know that what is considered to be deviant varies across societies. How could members of our society see drinking as anything but a norm when everywhere one turns alcohol is being advertised? Whether it be on billboards, busses, in magazine ads, or television commercials, alcohol is everywhere and it seems as though everyone is drinking it. Gone are the times of prohibition, when alcohol was seen as evil. After doing quantitative research on drinking, including a literature review and studying survey data, we came to the conclusion that drinking is a serious problem in the United States. While both of us prefer not to drink, many of our peers do not share our same attitude. In fact, it appears as if drinking is now a measure of social acceptance among teenagers and college students. Looking at the subject of drinking from a conflict theorist point-of-view helped us to understand the issue. We discovered that every social class drinks, regardless of age, income, race, or sex. We wanted to see the effects of drinking in our society and which groups of people were more likely to participate in such activities. However, when we began to search for variables of drinking, we were discouraged to find that none existed in our provided databases. To call a concept a variable means, in the first place, that it is a thing of interest in a particular piece of research (McIntyre 50). While we were interested in using a variable of drinking in our research, the lack of one made us assume that many members of society do not view alcohol as a serious problem, or are in denial of its effects. Because of this, we had to use a variable of drug use, that being whether marijuana should be made legal or not, assuming that those who answered yes to the question, were current marijuana smokers. Though we do not view marijuana use as a problem, it was the only other mind-altering substance that we felt could be even mildly compared to alcohol. We do not feel that marijuana has a ny of the same social effects as alcohol, and is not a true problem among our society, but once again, it was the only variable we could measure. Make note that in all theories and hypothesis we tested, we actually were stating our views as though alcohol was the variable, not marijuana. We started our research by testing our theory that people who smoke marijuana were more likely to have unprotected sex, because marijuana alters the minds ability to think clearly. Often times, people who are high do not think about the risks of having unprotected sex, or even using a condom for that matter. We then developed the hypothesis that people who smoke marijuana are more likely to not use condoms during sexual intercourse. To tests these ideas, we operationalized the dependent variable of condom, which asks the question, The last time you had sex was a condom used? This includes vaginal, oral, or anal sex. We then used the independent variable of grass, which asks the question, Do you think the use of marijuana should be made legal or not? Here are the results: Table I: Whether a Person Feels That Marijuana Should be Made Legal or Not and Condom Usage The data showed that people who do not feel marijuana should be made legal are more likely to not use condoms during sex, therefore, rejecting our hypothesis and proving the exact opposite. This could be due to the fact that married people or couples in serious relationships often do not use condoms as a main form of birth control. However, the correlation was very weak, even though the probability was low. To see if our prediction about why that certain group of people were the most likely to not use condoms, we controlled for marital status. The results were basically the same except that, as we predicted, married people were more likely to not