The Relationship between Social Capital and Alcohol Use

1. The Relationship between Social Capital and Alcohol Use American College Health Association Annual Meeting, June 4, 2010 Julie A. White NahokoKawakyuO’Connor University of Rochester, Warner Graduate School of Education

2. About Us • Julie • Health Education, Social Norms, Gender and Health • Critical Sociological and Multicultural Theories • Community Colleges • Financial Aid Policy • Nahoko • Financial Aid Policy • Social and Class Stratification and Reproduction • Assessment and Evaluation • Research Methods

3. About the Research Team • Margaret Yerdon, Ph.D. candidate • Andrew Wall, Ph.D.

4. Presentation Goals

5. Re-examination of current framework: Ideas to Consider

6. Re-examination of current framework: Current Paradigms

7. Conceptual Framework: Social Justice North, 2006

8. Conceptual Framework: Social Justice * Alcohol consumption as a social justice issue: Ensuring our institutions are just, equitable environments, rather than social structures that reify social inequities.

9. Re-examination of current framework: Reasons for Drinking

10. Conceptual Framework: Sociological Framework

11. Symbolic Interactionism

12. Social Capital Theory (Bourdieu, 1989) Social field and habitus are not benign; they tend to reproduce the power relationships with social contexts

13. Consider… Social capital is “the thesis that privileged individuals maintain their position by using their connections with other privileged people” (Field, 2008, p. 31)

14. Re-Examining College Alcohol Consumption

15. Research Questions

16. Methods

17. Preliminary Results

18. The Students N= 530; response rate= 47.41%

19. Research Question #1: Are there differences and similarities in the different student populations in alcohol consumption and its role in accessing social capital?

20. Different populations • Students who are in an NCAA team drink more than students who are not members of a NCAA sports team. • Drinks/week = 5.613 + 3.858 (athlete) • Fraternity members drink more than non-members. • Drinks/ week = 7.126 + 14.124 (fraternity) • Women have a significantly lower rate of alcohol consumption than men. • Drinks/week = 5.323 + 6.286 (men) • Students at 2-year institutions report significantly lower alcohol consumption than students at 4-year institutions. • Drinks/week = 4.714 +4.045 (4 year institution)

21. Goal 3: Results Access to Social Capital • Athletes report a significantly higher access to social capital through alcohol consumption than those who are not part of this social network (mean = 3.89, s.d.=.893, t(293)=-5.26, p≤.001). • Members of community service organizations do not differ in their perception of access to social capital through drinking than non-members (mean=3.45, s.d.= 1.34, t(10.84)=-.45, p>.05) • Academic Greek organizations do not differ in their perception of access to social capital, but social Greek organizations report an increase in access to social capital through drinking.

22. Research Question #2: How does the consumption of alcohol in certain social networks allow members of the network to gain social capital?

23. Using Social Capital Theory • In certain social networks (fields), there is a social norm (habitus) that alcohol consumption leads to increased social benefits and resources (capital). • There is a difference in perceived access to social capital between different types of social networks.

24. Examples from the Data • Students revealed that the alcohol consumption of a prospective member was a notable factor of fit into the organization. • Data revealed that if students do not want to drink, they will not go to the parties where they know they are serving alcohol and choose to do something else. • It was understood that the norm of certain social spaces was to consume alcohol. • Alcohol use functions as a gatekeeper to social networks. Access to social group membership and benefit is at times restricted based upon self-commitment to non-use.

25. Research Question 3: How do hegemonic notions of masculinity and femininity adhere within different social networks? (community college students)

26. Gender norms and age • There are no significant age-related differences in adherence to hegemonic gender norms for women. F(1, 102) = .003, p=.960. • Average hegemonic gender norms scores of men aged 17-24 (M=15.22 SD=2.16) are significantly different from the average hegemonic gender norms scores of men 25 and over (M=13, SD=2.00). t (27) =2.765, p =.010

27. Gender and amount of drinking

28. Women and masculine norms

29. Women and masculine norms

30. Implications

31. Summary

32. Questions?

33. Contacts • Julie A. White julie.white@warner.rochester.edu (585) 262-1665 Twitter: CCEdJWhite • NahokoKawakyu O’Connor nahoko.kawakyuoconnor@warner.rochester.edu (585) 402-0678 • Andrew F. Wall afwall@warner.rochester.edu

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