Examining the social ecology of a bar-crawl: An exploratory pilot study

PLoS One. 2017 Sep 27;12(9):e0185238. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0185238. eCollection 2017.

Abstract

Many of the problems associated with alcohol occur after a single drinking event (e.g. drink driving, assault). These acute alcohol problems have a huge global impact and account for a large percentage of unintentional and intentional injuries in the world. Nonetheless, alcohol research and preventive interventions rarely focus on drinking at the event-level since drinking events are complex, dynamic, and methodologically challenging to observe. This exploratory study provides an example of how event-level data may be collected, analyzed, and interpreted. The drinking behavior of twenty undergraduate students enrolled at a large Midwestern public university was observed during a single bar crawl event that is organized by students annually. Alcohol use was monitored with transdermal alcohol devices coupled with ecological momentary assessments and geospatial data. "Small N, Big Data" studies have the potential to advance health behavior theory and to guide real-time interventions. However, such studies generate large amounts of within subject data that can be challenging to analyze and present. This study examined how to visually display event-level data and also explored the relationship between some basic indicators and alcohol consumption.

MeSH terms

  • Alcohol Drinking / psychology*
  • Drinking
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Models, Theoretical
  • Pilot Projects
  • Regression Analysis
  • Social Environment*
  • Time Factors
  • Young Adult

Grants and funding

This work was funded by a seed grant from the College of Social Work at the Ohio State University. EarlyMoon LLP provided support in the form of salaries for authors [DDM], but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section.