Alcohol remains a public health problem among college-aged individuals, sustained even throughout the coronavirus pandemic that has affected these recent years. The pandemic has shaped the social and political landscape and affected our belief in our own safety in typical social situations as well as the safety of preventative measures such as masking up or the various coronavirus vaccines. College-aged students (defined as individuals aged 18-24 years old) have been experiencing changing social circumstances these last few months, with social interactions being various levels of restricted. Many typical locations for social interactions such as bars and restaurants have also been affected by the pandemic, each with various ways of addressing social distancing, mask mandates, and vaccine mandates. With the more recent contribution of vaccines towards protection against coronavirus, researchers were curious about how this new protection, and belief in the efficacy or effectiveness of the new protection, affected college students’ social habits. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to determine how confidence in the efficacy of the coronavirus vaccine affected the drinking behaviors of college-aged individuals. The data for the study will be collected via an online survey housed in Qualtrics, inviting students through email invitations at a mid-sized midwestern university, Miami University. The questionnaire will contain questions modeled after the health-belief model to determine confidence in the efficacy of the vaccine, as well as questions to determine social drinking habits before, during, and after quarantine. It is expected that the students with a more negative attitude towards the efficacy of the vaccine will have less frequent drinking behaviors than students with full confidence in the vaccine’s protections. This survey will help determine how much the risk of the coronavirus affects the social behaviors of college-aged students.
Author: Abigail Meikle, Psychology
Advisor: Rose Marie Ward, Department of Kinesiology, Nutrition and Health
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