Binge drinking down at UF, campus survey finds

August 30, 2001

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Binge drinking among University of Florida students, and especially among men, has declined during the last two years, according to a new campus study.

Overall, the rate of binge drinking – five or more drinks at one sitting – fell from 46 percent in 1999 to 40 percent in 2001, a decline of 6 percent among UF students, the study shows. The drop was highest among men who binge drank more than three times during a two-week period, with 30.4 percent reporting “frequent binging,” as it is called, in 1999, compared with 20.9 percent this year, the results showed.

“We are encouraged by these findings,” said Phillip Barkley, director of UF’s Student Health Care Center. “The university has been very proactive in responding to high-risk drinking, and we believe our collective efforts are making a difference. We hope that through collaboration with students, faculty and staff, and the greater community, we will see high risk drinking rates fall even further.”

Of 659 students who responded to a randomly distributed survey early this year, 60.1 percent of undergraduates said that at no time during the past two weeks had they engaged in binge drinking, compared with 53.7 percent who were asked the same question in 1999, the study found.

Barkley also is president of the American College Health Association, which developed the survey questionnaire as part of a study being done at dozens of colleges and universities across the country.

National averages for binge drinking among college students hover at 44 percent, so UF’s 40 percent is an encouraging finding, said Joanne Auth, coordinator of education and training programs at UF’s student health center.

“We hope this apparent change reflects a trend which will be supported by repeated studies,” she said. “Not only have we had a greater than 6 percent reduction in binge drinking in two years, which is reassuring, but the biggest change appears to be in frequent binge drinkers.”

A total of 16.6 percent of UF students surveyed this year were frequent binge drinkers — reporting drinking three or more times during the previous two weeks — compared with 22.5 percent in 1999.

Tavis Glassman, coordinator of UF’s Campus Alcohol and Drug Resource Center, believes a variety of alcohol prevention and intervention efforts by UF and the community have helped to reduce the binge-drinking rate.

“Two years ago was just about the time all our social norm efforts were starting up to convince students that there weren’t as many students doing a lot of drinking, that a very few were doing a predominant amount of the drinking,” Glassman said.

“We’ve really rallied in the last year or two, partly in response to events after the 1999 Tennessee football game, when a couple of young people died” in off-campus incidents, Glassman said. “Campus officials, administrators and the community got really serious and said, ‘What can we do?’”

Those measures included a Gainesville city ordinance requiring bars to stop serving alcohol and close at 2 a.m. and a university policy denying people the opportunity to return to a football game if they leave the stadium, he said.

The study, part of a larger one, also found:

* Sixty-seven percent of UF students describe their health as “good” or “excellent.” “That leaves 33 percent who thought it was ‘fair,’ ‘poor’ or ‘very bad,’ which is a pretty high percentage for what we call a young population,” Auth said.

* The most frequent health problem students mentioned within the last year was allergy (46.2 percent), followed by back pain (44.4 percent), sinus infection (29.6 percent), depression (19.4 percent), strep throat (12.3 percent) and anxiety disorder (10.9 percent).

* A total of 10.2 percent of those surveyed said they had seriously considered attempting suicide in the last 12 months. The finding is similar to levels found among college students polled across the nation, Auth said.

The results from the National College Health Assessment and bi-yearly repeats will provide a rich data set to compare UF with other colleges and universities nationwide, Auth said, with the ultimate goal of tailoring health prevention services and treatment programs to meet students’ evolving needs.