Author : Brea Burger
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (894 download)
Book Synopsis Identification of College Students' Recreational Networks and the Temporal Association with Drinking and Hooking-up by : Brea Burger
Download or read book Identification of College Students' Recreational Networks and the Temporal Association with Drinking and Hooking-up written by Brea Burger and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For young adults, alcohol use and sexual behavior are imbedded in a particular form of social network: the people whom they engage in a variety of activities with over a weekend, referred to as a recreational network. Little attention has been paid to examining these recreational networks in previous research. The current study attempts to fill this gap. The first aim of the present study was to examine the heterogeneity in network characteristics associated with drinking and hooking-up sexual behavior among undergraduate college students. The second aim was to explore the temporal changes that occur over a weekend within these recreational networks and their association with drinking and hooking-up. From a behavior change perspective, the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) suggests that people's social relationships can shape their behavior through norms. Therefore, this theory along with a social network perspective were combined to explain why students may be drinking and hooking-up in distinct recreational networks over the weekend. In the spring, summer, and fall semesters of 2012, 435 college students completed the HUDSoN (Hooking Up and Drinking Social Network) Questionnaire on consecutive days during a weekend. The HUDSoN includes: 1) questions on hooking-up and drinking behavior and 2) a social network inventory that examines with whom students are hanging out, characteristics of those individuals, and the multi-dimensional relationships among network members. To achieve the first aim, latent class analysis (LCA) was used to identify recreational network profiles using data from Friday night. Six network indicators were used in the LCA model: 1) size, 2) gender diversity, 3) drinking buddies in the network, 4) activities engaged in by each network member, 5) level of trust within the network, and 6) age of network members. Hooking-up and drinking behavior were then added to the LCA model as covariates. To achieve the second aim, latent transition analysis (LTA) was used to explore the temporal changes that occur within college students' recreational networks from Thursday to Friday night using the same six network indicators. Hooking-up and drinking behavior were then added to the LTA model as covariates to examine whether these behaviors are associated with movement between the network classes. As a result of the LCA three distinct network classes were identified: 1) Risky Partiers (26.7%), 2) Restrictive Partiers (34.0%), and 3) Restrictive Non-Partiers (39.3%). Alcohol consumption and hooking-up were associated with membership into network class. Students who consumed alcohol were most likely to be Risky Partiers and less likely to be Restrictive Partiers in comparison to Restrictive Non-Partiers. Students who hooked-up were most likely to be Risky Partiers or Restrictive Partiers compared to Restrictive Non-Partiers. As a result of the LTA model four distinct network profiles were identified: 1) Risky Partiers (22.9%, 25.8%), 2) Restrictive Partiers (28.3%, 44.8%), 3) Inclusive Non-Partiers (28.8%, 3.0%), and 4) Restrictive Non-Partiers (19.9%, 26.3%). Alcohol consumption and hooking-up were associated with movement between the recreational network classes from Thursday to Friday night Drinking was associated with an increased likelihood of students transitioning to Risky Partiers from Thursday to Friday night, whereas hooking-up behavior was only associated with Inclusive Non-Partiers transitioning to Risky Partiers.Findings from this study suggest that students drink and engage in sexual behavior in different ways depending on their recreational networks. These findings have potential implications for interventions to decrease risky alcohol and sexual behaviors targeting the type of recreational networks in which undergraduate students choose to embed themselves.
