Using Prosocial Schema and Beliefs about Gender Roles to Predict Alcohol Use for Engineering Majors

ABSTRACT

This project examines the relationship between prosocial schema, beliefs about gender roles, and alcohol use among first-year engineering majors. I collected two waves of survey data from first-year engineering students at a large Midwestern university in the fall of 2014 (n = 359). Prosocial schema captures the belief systems of individuals in terms of how they identify themselves with positive, socially approved characteristics. I assessed patterns in the use of alcohol as they vary by prosocial schema and whether students use alcohol to cope with discrepancies between prosocial self-schemas and the prosocial characteristics attributed to typical engineers. Findings show that higher scores on prosocial self-schemas result in lower reported binge drinking. This relationship is further clarified by the mediating effects of progressive ideas about women in the workplace. Results suggest that these engineering students do not engage in the traditional style of college “life as a party” and that there is a type of “progressive teetotaler” that emerges as a means of impression management and framed by professionalism tensions in engineering.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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Margaret S. Kelley

Margaret S. Kelley, PhD (New York University), is an Associate Professor in the Department of American Studies at the University of Kansas.  Her research focuses on gender, health, drug and alcohol use, and deviance.  A key theme in her work as been examining the interaction of drug uses with both formal and informal organizations, and the subcultures and networks that develop around drug use.  Her newest multimethod project is an investigation of women, guns, and American gun culture, and involves a national survey, Guns in American Life, along with a local ethnography of women shooters.  Recent publications have appeared in Gender and Education, Deviant Behavior, and Journal of Drug Issues.