Is Alcohol Consumption Associated with Poor Academic Achievement in University Students?

Times of transition demand that individuals learn how to balance self-care with new priorities. Just as students with physical disabilities should seek out accommodations to help them achieve academic success, those with mental illness should seek out mental health resources. Each day, participants were asked if they attended all their classes, with response options including ‘yes’, ‘no’, and ‘did not have any’. A dichotomous variable for skipping class was computed, with attending all their classes or not having any classes coded as 0 and missing at least one class coded as 1.

Excessive Drinking At College

Both Lygidakis and colleagues (2010) and Wang and colleagues (2005) indicate that adolescents completing electronic surveys reported higher levels of alcohol and other drug use compared with those completing paper-and-pencil versions. Because of the increased risk of consequences to self and others that occurs when a person drinks at or beyond the binge threshold, a great deal of emphasis is placed on tracking the percentage of college students that cross binge thresholds. Although this has proven extremely valuable, as Wechsler and Nelson (2001, p. 289) state, “Alcohol use is a complex behavior. This is an important consideration as recent studies suggest that plenty of college students who cross the binge threshold when they drink go far beyond it.

Is students’ problem drinking associated with academic achievement?

While several studies have examined the effect of alcohol on the quantity of education using measures such as years of schooling completed, high-school graduation, or dropping out of college, this paper investigates the effect of alcohol use on the quality of education among college students. I examined the acute and chronic effects of alcohol use on college student performance (using GPA as a measure of performance). Using the data on 1,025 college students from NLSY97 enrolled between the years 2004 to 2009, I employed the diff-in-diff with individual fixed and the simple fixed effect model. The results showed a significant effect of acute drinking on student performance among females but not males. The study reveals that a significant proportion of college students consume alcohol, and this is detrimental not just to their health but alcoholism also to their academic performance, most especially among females. More college students drink, and drink more heavily, during specific celebratory events, such as spring break and 21st birthday celebrations, than during a typical week.

The effects of alcohol on interpersonal relationships of college students

• Further, 40 percent of students—more males (44 percent) than females (37 percent)—reported getting drunk in a given month.
• Several studies have tested for student-status differences on other measures of the consequences of drinking, such as alcohol use disorders (Dawson et al., 2004; Slutske, 2005).
• We used multivariate logistic regression with clustered standard errors to estimate the likelihood of each AHTO domain and any AHTO for demographic and behavioural risk and protective factors.
• In addition, to facilitate more valid comparisons, future research would benefit from some standardization, were possible, to the measures employed to estimate the various “facets” of alcohol consumption and/or types of drinking patterns.
• The study was a general student health survey26 which also contained two questions about students’ views on their academic performance.
• Such designs would need to collect baseline data on the relevant variables beginning many years before college.

Future empirical and clinical work would do well to consider the differing challenges facing each population. Alcohol use increases in the transition out of high school (Baer et al., 1995), rising to the highest levels across the life span during emerging adulthood (i.e., ages 18-25; Arnett, 2000). Twenty-five percent of graduating high school seniors engage in heavy episodic drinking (defined in this article as four or more drinks in a sitting for females, five or more for males), but that rate increases to 40% following graduation and remains stable through age 24 (Bachman et al., 1997; Johnston et al., 2009a). Moreover, alcohol use disorders are more prevalent among emerging and young adults than among any other age group. Approximately 9% of those ages meet the criteria for alcohol dependence, more than twice the overall prevalence rate (Grant et al., 2004). Research examining interplay among the many personal, environmental, and social-role contributors to drinking during this period is therefore crucial to understanding the etiology of problematic alcohol involvement and designing interventions.

Response rates for the in-person computer-assisted personal interviews, NSDUH and NESARC, which assess college student drinking but are not limited to college students, are roughly 77 percent and 81 percent, respectively. Currently, there is no basis for assessing response rates for national Web-based assessments of college drinking. However, smaller studies suggest that response rates might be comparable, if not higher, than other approaches. Further, response rates for Web-based surveys can be improved by sending reminders via e-mail (van Gelder et al. 2010). Alcohol’s harms to others (AHTO) refers to the negative effects experienced by individuals other than the drinker. This study investigates the prevalence and risk factors of AHTOs among US college students (sophomores/juniors), based on the first national probability-based survey conducted in 20 years.

• Within persons across days, skipping class was hypothesized to be more likely and time spent on schoolwork was hypothesized to be less following heavy episodic or high-intensity drinking days compared to moderate drinking days.
• When consumed in large quantities during a single occasion, such as a binge episode, alcohol can cause death directly by suppressing brain stem nuclei that control vital reflexes, like breathing and gagging to clear the airway (Miller and Gold 1991).
• However, universities vary with regard to how they handle such cases, and a student’s perception of safety and protection can influence the likelihood of reporting a sexual assault.
• Doing so can make it difficult to fall asleep in a timely fashion, so minimize phone time and keep the lights off.
• The CDC often uses attributable fractions calculated by Smith and colleagues (1999) based upon a review of 331 medical-examiner studies.

When establishing a good sleep schedule, you’ll want to go to bed and wake up at the same time on each day, regardless of your class schedule. While this deficit may seem trivial, it’s important to note that sleep deprivation is cumulative; over time, it can have extreme detrimental effects. Sleep health refers to the quality and quantity of sleep an individual gets — a person who sleeps at a consistent time, in an efficient manner, and for a sufficient number of hours, can be said to have good sleep health. While gaining a few pounds here and there (and perhaps indulging in a little too much fast food) is not uncommon, there is how does alcohol affect relationships a clear difference between this behavior and binge eating disorder.