An Investigation into Drinking Culture Among Students at UCD

This report investigates the drinking behavior of students at University College Dublin (UCD), focusing on the primary research question: 'What are the major reasons or factors which make many students engage in the behavior of drinking alcohol when studying in UCD?' It employs qualitative methods, including online questionnaires, oral interviews, and direct observation, to gather data from 200 UCD students who drink. The study explores reasons such as stress from studies, peer pressure, curiosity, fun, and accessibility of alcohol. Researchers also aim to understand the abnormal behaviors exhibited by students after drinking, using visual methods like video and audio recordings to document these behaviors. The findings of this research are intended to inform the development of measures to reduce excessive drinking among UCD students.

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Drinking in UCD
Student’s Name
Student’s Number
Course
Professor’s Name
Institution’s Name
Institution’s Location
Date

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Drinking in UCD
An overview of the research findings
In most of the higher institutions, the habit of students drinking or taking alcohol and
other drugs has been rising at an alarming rate in the last few years (Guillén, Roth, Alfaro, and
Fernández, 2015, pp.53-63). There are many reasons which can be associated with this behavior
of drinking in higher institutions, and this paper aims to focus on the drinking behavior of the
students who study in UCD. The main research question which will be investigated in this paper
is, ‘what are the major reasons or factors which make many students engage in the behavior of
drinking alcohol when studying in UCD?’ There will be other secondary questions which will be
investigated in this research and the main secondary question will be, ‘what are the cheeky or
abnormal behaviors portrayed by the students of UCD after drinking?’
To be able to answer our question, we’ll first review the available literature which
explores the drinking behaviors of students especially those studying in higher institutions.
According to the available literature, some of the main reasons why the students in higher
institutions drink alcohol include receiving so much stress from their studies, peer pressure, fun,
curiosity, and accessibility (Yoon, Lam, Sham, and Lam, 2015, pp.1231-1237). These are the
main reasons which have made many students who study in UCD to engage in drinking behavior
when in school. Many of the students join the institution having not tasted alcohol, but after
interacting with the other students, these students are influenced by their friends who drink to
start drinking.

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To explore these reasons in details, we can start with the stress received by the students
when undertaking their studies. Research has shown that most of the students especially those
who take very challenging or difficult courses start drinking due to the high levels of stress
which they get from their studies (Tavolacci et al., 2016, pp.178-180). Peer pressure or peer
influence is another major reason why some of the students who study in UCD start drinking.
These students are normally influenced and challenged for not taking alcohol by their friends
who drink, and most of them end up joining them in the drinking behavior (Brooks-Russell,
Simons-Morton, Haynie, Farhat, and Wang, 2014, pp.497-505). Curiosity is another major
reason why some of the students who study in UCD start drinking. Some of these students are
always very curious to know how alcohol tastes and understand how their friends feel after
drinking, and so they usually end up joining them in drinking to know how alcohol tastes and
how they feel after drinking (Alhyas et al., 2015). Fun is another major reason why some of the
students who study in UCD drink. These students normally take it as great fun drinking alcohol,
and so they drink and influence their friends to join them in drinking to enjoy the great fun
(Thompson and Romo, 2016, pp.688-695). Accessibility is another major reason why some of
the students who study in UCD drink. When alcohol is easily accessible to students, most of the
students will always be tempted to drink (Lu et al., 2015, pp. 7208-7219). There are many clubs
or pubs within and around the institution where the students can easily access alcohol, and this
has motivated many students to drink since they can easily access alcohol when they need it.
An overview explaining why qualitative methods are suitable for this study

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Qualitative methods are the most suitable methods which can be applied in this study or
research. Qualitative methods mainly deal with the views, thoughts and the opinions of
respondents on the issue(s) being investigated researched (Padgett, 2016). There are different
data/information collection methods which are applied when using qualitative methods where the
most common data collection methods are interviews, focus groups, participation or
observations, open-ended questionnaires, among others (Taylor, Bogdan, and DeVault, 2015).
This paper aims to study some of the main reasons why some of the students who study in UCD
drink, and in this case, qualitative methods will be suitable since they will help us to gather the
views, the thoughts, and the opinions of the students who drink, and this information will help us
to understand the main reasons why these students drink. To conduct the research effectively,
we’ll use questionnaire and interview as the main data collection methods to collect data online
(Bryman, 2016). These two main methods will be appropriate for the study where the willing
participants will be provided with questionnaire forms to fill, and the other participants will be
interviewed orally through phone calls. To encourage participation in the research, all the
participants will be given a remuneration of $20 each after successfully filling all the
questionnaire questions or answering all the oral questions which will be asked through the oral
interview. Qualitative methods will be very effective in this study where questionnaire,
interviews, and observation data collection methods will help us to get all the required
information about the main reasons why some of the students of UCD drink.
A brief note of who will participate in the research and where the research will be located

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The main participants of the research are the students of UCD who drink alcohol. The
research targets about 200 participants (UCD students who drink), and their responses will help
the researchers to understand the main reasons why students drink. As already said earlier,
questionnaire and interview methods are the two main methods which will be used in collecting
the required data/information. In the questionnaire method, we shall prepare some questionnaire
forms which will have some open-ended questions which will seek to address some of the
reasons why UCD students drink. These questions won’t request any personal data or
information which can discourage the students from participating in the research (Spiekermann,
Acquisti, Böhme, and Hui, 2015, pp.161-167). The questionnaire forms will be uploaded to a
special website where the participants will be expected to access the website and fill the
questionnaire questions and then submit the forms after completing. All participants to
participate in the online survey will be given some special passwords which they will use to
access the website and the survey/questionnaire forms. Oral interview method will also be used
where some of the students will be interviewed orally through phone calls to understand some of
the main reasons why they drink. The research targets to collect data/information from 200
students who drink, where 100 students will fill the questionnaire forms, and the other 100 will
be interviewed orally through phone calls. The data collection process will be online through
online surveys and phone interviews and offline through observation and other visual methods.
The usefulness of the methods used in the data collection process
As already said, the online questionnaires and phone interviews will be the main online
methods which will be used to collect the required information/data from the UCD students who

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drink. These two methods will work in a similar way where all the questions which will be
addressed by these questions will be the same. These questions will seek to address the main
reasons why most of the students of UCD drink, and the responses which will be received will
help the researchers to understand the main reasons why these students drink. The main
questions which will be asked in the interviews are:
1. What’s your country of origin?
2. What’s your age?
3. When did you start drinking? (month and/or year please)
4. How often do you drink? (daily, twice a week, weekly, monthly, or other (please
specify)
5. Do you drink alcohol only or you take other drugs? (if you take other drugs, please
specify the drugs)
6. Why did you start drinking? (the main reason(s), please pick at most two)
A. To cope with the stress of your studies
B. Pressure from your peers (friends)
C. For fun
D. Due to curiosity
E. Because alcohol is easily accessible in school
Other reasons (please specify)
7. Why do you drink today? (the main reason(s), please pick at most two)
A. To cope with the stress of your studies
B. Pressure from your peers (friends)

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C. For fun
D. Because alcohol is easily accessible in school
Other reasons (please specify)
8. Do you bring any violence after drinking?
9. What abnormal behaviors do you portray after drinking? (please give at least one)
After collecting some relevant data/information about the drinking behaviors of the
students who study in UCD through the online surveys and oral interviews, a few of the
researchers will be sent to UCD where they will collect more data/information through direct
observation method and visual methods. These researchers will interact with the students who
drink in the pubs and the other areas where these students relax after the classes. The researchers
will ask them some more questions about their lives especially how drinking affects their lives.
The researchers will also be very keen to observe all their behaviors after drinking and how they
associate with the other students who drink and those who don’t drink. The observation of the
lives and the behaviors of the UCD students who drink will be a good source of first-hand
information to the researchers and will help them to understand the lives of the students who
drink and the main challenges which they face after drinking. This information will help to
supplement the information which was collected from the online surveys/questionnaires and the
oral phone interviews. First-hand information is normally the best and the most accurate
information since it mainly comes directly from the source (Buell, 2015, pp.88-91). Combining
the information collected from the online surveys and the oral interviews with that collected
through observation method will help the researchers to get detailed and accurate answers to
their research questions.

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Visual methods will also be useful in this study where they will help to collect more data
or information from the students of UCD who drink. In qualitative research, visual methods are
methods which mainly rely on artistic knowledge and mediums to collect, produce, and represent
information (Banks and Zeitlyn, 2015). These methods involve the use of photography, films,
video recordings, audio recordings, paintings, drawings, sculptures, among other artistic
elements or resources which helps in the representation of data or information in qualitative
research. In this study, the main visual methods which will be used in the collection of the
required data or information will be video recording and audio recording where the researchers
will record some audios and some videos showing the behaviors of the students of UCD after
drinking. Some of the students portray some cheeky behaviors where they raise violence and
fight among themselves and sometimes fight the other sober people, shout recklessly, abuse
other people, among other bad behaviors which can’t be tolerated by many people (Legrain,
2016, pp.65-80). When interacting with these students who drink, the researchers will secretly
record some videos and some audios showing the abnormal behaviors of the students when
drunk, and these videos will help these researchers and the other researchers to understand the
behaviors of the students of UCD when they drink.
We can end our paper by saying that this research will be very important since it will help
us to understand the drinking behavior of the students of UCD and more importantly the main
reasons which make them drink. This information is important as it can be applied to come up
with the appropriate measures which can be implemented to reduce the cases of drinking in
UCD.

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References
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A. and Al Ghaferi, H., 2015. Adolescents’ perception of substance use and factors influencing its
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Brooks-Russell, A., Simons-Morton, B., Haynie, D., Farhat, T. and Wang, J., 2014. Longitudinal
relationship between drinking with peers, descriptive norms, and adolescent alcohol
use. Prevention Science, 15(4), pp.497-505.
Bryman, A., 2016. Social research methods. Oxford: Oxford university press.
Buell, S., 2015. A commentary on “First-hand experience of accessible information”. Tizard
Learning Disability Review, 20(2), pp.88-91.

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Guillén, N., Roth, E., Alfaro, A. and Fernández, E., 2015. Youth alcohol drinking behavior:
Associated risk and protective factors. Revista Iberoamericana de Psicología y Salud, 6(2),
pp.53-63.
Legrain, L., 2016. Drunkards and Singers: A Mongolian Battle of Sounds. Journal of Ethnology
and Folkloristics, 10(2), pp.65-80.
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Tavolacci, M.P., Boerg, E., Richard, L., Meyrignac, G., Dechelotte, P. and Ladner, J., 2016.
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Thompson, C.M. and Romo, L.K., 2016. College students’ drinking and posting about alcohol:
Forwarding a model of motivations, behaviors, and consequences. Journal of health
communication, 21(6), pp.688-695.
Yoon, S., Lam, W.W., Sham, J.T. and Lam, T.H., 2015. Learning to drink: How Chinese
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