Research Proposal on Underage Drinking

Research importance

The problem of underage drinking is claiming more than 4300 lives of minors in the USA every year. The habit has a profound negative impact on the underage themselves, the family and the society larges. Despite the federal and state government launching aggressive effort since 19080s, for preventing underage drinking, the problem is persistently growing (Harding, Hingson, Klitzner, Mosher, Brown, Vincent, & Cannon, 2016). However, studies have shown that the state and federal efforts have been able to slow the increase of these for example decline in traffic deaths among the 16-20 years old persons. Therefore this study is very critical to improve the management of the problem.

The research questions

Why are cases of underage drinking increasing on university campuses?

What are the laws governing underage drinking?

What are the risk factors for underage drinking?

Why is it difficult to curb underage drinking in universities?

The hypotheses

H0: If social events increase at the university campus the level of underage drinking do not increase.

H1: Drinking among underage university students increases with increase in social events at school.

The independent and dependent variables

The independent variable will be: Social events on the university campuses

Dependent variable: Drinking of the underage

The measurement of independent and dependent variables

Measurement of the independent variable will be an observation of the number of social events that occur and at what time of the semester, month, week, and days. The dependent variable will be measured based on the cases of alcohol intoxication that will be reported by the school and the criminal justice department in such events. It will also be measured by understanding the number of underage people who attend the events and likely to drink alcohol and for what purpose.

The ethical concerns raised by your study

The ethical concern will be the autonomy of the member willing to participate in the study being respected. Additionally, the confidentiality of their data should be held safe.

The exact wording to get data from target participants

The study would ask for their details such as the demographic data to ensure they are underage before participating in the study. For instance, what is the frequency of the social events in the university? Do you attend these events? Do you take alcohol in each event? Roughly from your observation what is the percentage of people taking alcohol in these events? What motivates you and maybe other to take alcohol at these events?

The Research design and data collection methods will you use?

The study will apply a survey research which is one of the quantitative research design.

The population and sampling technique

The population will be campus student, and sampling method will involve the freshmen and sophomore students from three nearby campuses. A total of 100 students will be used with ten students representing a 1000 underage people.

The limitations of your study

The limitation of the study will be students who fail to disclose their true identity and age but still want to participate in the study. Verifying their information would be a challenge. The timing to access these students to share their information will be a concern.

The anticipated findings

Social events involve the drinking of alcohol and use of drugs on the university campuses. Most students start using alcohol due to peer pressure facilitated by the unregulated campus environment which promotes the problems. The social events are common, and at least each day of the week they occur, but this trend goes down during or shortly before the exam period.

The implications of findings have for criminal justice policy or practice

The criminal justice will review the policy on juvenile delinquency and intoxication on university campuses. The prevention programs have to be started early to reduce the burden on the rehabilitation activities for intoxicated campus students.

References

Harding, F. M., Hingson, R. W., Klitzner, M., Mosher, J. F., Brown, J., Vincent, R. M., ... & Cannon, C. L. (2016). Underage drinking: a review of trends and prevention strategies. American journal of preventive medicine, 51(4), S148-S157.