Friday 6 April 2012

Graduates and drinking

From the Graduate Longitudinal Study New Zealand we learn that when it comes to how often graduates drink alcohol the results are:
11.5%  Never
9.3%  Almost never
11.7%  Less than once a month
10.7%  Once a month
14.4%  Once every two weeks
18.1%  Once a week
17.8%  Two or three times a week
4.4%  Four or five times a week
2.1%  Six or seven times a week
0.1%  Skipped question

How many standard drinks containing alcohol do you have on a typical day when you are drinking?

n = 7676 (88.0%) who indicated that they drink at least some alcohol (i.e., excluding those who indicated that they never drink alcohol) and responded to this item
Mean = 4.1 (SD = 3.6)
Median = 3.0
Mode = 2
Range = 1 – 25+ (those who endorsed 25+ drinks were assigned the lower limit value of 25)
Interquartile range = 2.0 – 5.0

How often do you have six or more standard drinks on one occasion?

n = 7713 (88.5%) who indicated that they drink at least some alcohol (i.e., excluding those who indicated that they never drink alcohol)
25.3% Never
26.4% Once or twice a year
17.6% Less than monthly
17.2% Monthly
13.0% Weekly
0.1% Daily or almost daily
0.3% Skipped question
I shall leave it to BERL to workout the social cost of graduates.

2 comments:

Eric Crampton said...

Surely we'd need some linkage to baseline results to establish anything about the differential costs of graduates as compared to drop-outs or those who never attend tertiary.

Results could be interesting.

V said...

Since when do students answer these surveys honestly?

Note, I'm not taking a position on the social cost of alcohol, but I can remember universities forcing these surveys infront of everyone, and it receiving a bit of a laugh.

The results are more likely a commentary on what students 'think' appropriate levels of drinking are, not what they actually do.