Research and Data

15.June.05
Using incident report data from the Madison Police Department and the UW Police, a chart was created to show crime occurring in downtown Madison on both home football game weekends and away football game weekends in 2004. Crimes included in this graph include incidents of liquor law violations, noise complaints, disorderly conduct, and vandalism. Crimes occuring on both Fridays and Saturdays were included. As seen in the graph, the highest rates of crime occur on football weekends in the month of September:

…

Positive Trends from the College Alcohol Study

Summary of UW–Madison College Alcohol Study Findings (tables; 1993 to 2005)

Full Data from College Alcohol Study (Microsoft Excel document)

…

Spring.03 | 40:3
NASPA Journal (National Association of Student Personnel Administrators)
Residential Learning Communities Positively Affect College Binge Drinking
by Aaron M. Brower, Chris M. Golde, and Caitilyn Allen

abstract:  Recent surveys demonstrate that college students “binge drink” or engage in high-risk episodic drinking at high rates across the country. This drinking pattern has been associated with most of the serious health, legal, and academic problems faced by students and colleges. This study explored how living in a residential learning community affects drinking behaviors. Students living in three different residential learning communities at a large, midwestern public university were found to binge drink at significantly lower rates than did matched comparison groups who lived in another university residence hall. Further, learning community residents also suffered fewer problems arising from either their own drinking or that of others. We interpret these results as suggesting that new social norms — peer expectations about acceptable behavior — are created within the learning communities that positively affect binge drinking and its associated problems. These preliminary findings are promising indicators that student housing deliberately structured to promote community and academic involvement can reduce problem drinking behaviors, even when no explicit alcohol programming is involved.
[read article PDF  |  NASPA web site]

…

March.02 | 50:5
Journal of American College Health
Are College Students Alcoholics?
by Aaron M. Brower, PhD (principal investigator of the PACE project)

introduction:  Are college students alcoholics? We get this question a lot. It is a different question from “Is student drinking worse than ever before?” or “Is student drinking out of control?” This question is specifically about whether college students are alcoholics — whether their drinking is making them alcohol dependent or whether they are headed down a road to long-term alcohol abuse. We get this question from people with different agendas: from those who are sincerely interested in whether college students are alcoholics and from those who want to discuss why students drink, what harm drinking causes in a campus community, and how universities should best handle it. But we also get this question from those whom we call the Carrie Nations. Their question often leads to a one-sided lecture about the evils of alcohol (and society) and their contention that prohibition is the only real stance to take and that universities should promote abstinence....
[read article PDF  |  JACH web site]

…

8.Nov.02 | 284(18):2341–2347
Journal of the American Medical Association
Effect of Community Based Interventions on High-Risk Drinking and Alcohol-Related Injuries
by Harold D. Holder, PhD, et al.

summary:  Alcohol intoxication increases the risk of injury resulting from motor vehicle crashes and violent assaults. There is increasing evidence of a causal link between the availability of alcohol and traffic crashes and assaults in community settings. Previous evaluations of community-based programs to prevent alcohol-related injuries have focused specifically on fatal motor vehicle crashes or special populations, such as youth. We report an evaluation of a comprehensive, community-based environmental intervention to reduce rates of alcohol-related injuries resulting from motor vehicle crashes and assaults.
[read article  PDF  |  JAMA web site]

…

20.Oct.00 | p.B12
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Binge Drinking: Should We Attack the Name or the Problem?
by Henry Wechsler

introduction:  Each year, on campuses throughout our country, binge drinking causes numerous student deaths, thousands more injuries, and a host of other problems. People who binge more than once a week constitute almost one-fourth of all students and account for more than three-fifths of serious alcohol-related incidents on campuses. Yet, incredibly, some students, administrators, and policymakers continue to deny the significance — or even the existence — of the binge drinking that frequently occurs at colleges and universities....
[read article PDF  |  CHE web site (password required)]

To get involved with the PACE Project, contact us at pace@news.wisc.edu.
The Pace Project is coordinated by University Health Services,
the campus health clinic open to all current UW–Madison students.
Visit UHS at www.uhs.wisc.edu.