Being part of an anti-school subculture whilst in education and the likelihood of becoming a binge drinker.

Kate Williams

Rationale

Binge drinking has been fairly topic in the media of late. There is supposedly a moral panic about the changing social habits of girls who can now drink similar quantities of alcohol to their male counterparts. Because this slant has been so extensively documented, I opted to re-visit binge drinking but a different, yet equally pertinent angle; the experiences of binge drinkers when they were at school. I covered numerous theories of delinquency in the AS Youth Subculture topic. One in particular interested me; it gave different possible outcomes and this I thought made sense! I even thought that perhaps Merton had discovered this possible causal link years before me, when he looked at the rebels who turned to drink. He omitted the concept ‘binge’ though! Perhaps that is just a reflection of social change. To re-cap, then, I am investigating the possibility of there being a causal link between anti-school subcultures and binge drinking.

I have decided to conduct my research in a localised context. The area of study will in my local town of Wem, best described as a lovely rural town to bring up young children, but less desirable when they reach adolescence because there are so few facilities for them to involve themselves in. Consequently, their main leisure activity revolves around drinking whether it be in a pub or on the local park a.k.a. ‘The Rec’.

My aims for this research are as follows:

Are binge drinkers more likely to have been in lower streams when ...

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My aims for this research are as follows:

Are binge drinkers more likely to have been in lower streams when they were at school?
Does a negative experience at school correspond with a greater preference to engage in binge drinking?
Do binge drinkers fit into a particular typology?

My hypothesis for this research is: There is a causal relationship between being part of an anti-school subculture whilst in education and the likelihood of becoming a binge drinker.

Ethics played a significant part in determining the focus of this research. All the respondents were over 18, had left school and were known personally by myself. I felt that even thought I could have used some form of interview to probe into issues more detailed, I felt the area was indeed a sensitive one; and rightly or wrongly, decided to ‘play it safe’. I opted for a fairly comprehensive structured questionnaire, giving respondents the option to add supplementary information when I felt it necessary to do so. This way, I wasn’t probing too much and could ensure the focus was always kept on my aims. In terms of analysis, this meant the likelihood of me misinterpreting their responses was minimal – data was easy to encode and analyse. Further more, this wouldn’t affect my friendship with them after the research – which may have happened had I unintentionally crossed that line between being an acquaintance and a researcher. My decision to distance myself, I hope would add to the reliability of my fairly limited data. Because my research was so small scale, I could subsequently attempt to make some generalisations, but would have to exercise a degree of caution, considering my small sample size that wouldn’t necessarily represent other Wemians, yet along another area.

My main reason for opting to do a structured questionnaire is that I felt it best suited my ability to research my aims. To make the results that I am going o obtain as valid as they possibly could. I didn’t decide to do something such as an interview method as I believed when someone is being interviewed they have the opportunity to withheld all the information. Whereas a questionnaire enables them to be detailed and slightly indepth. However, also enables them to be truthful and comfortable with the information that they are divulging.

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