When Problem Servers Pour in Problematic Places: Alcoholic Beverage Servers' Willingness to Serve Patrons Beyond Intoxication

Abstract

Our objective was to examine alcoholic beverage servers' willingness to over-serve as an explanation for intoxication that occurs in drinking establishments. Survey data were collected in 2000 from 911 alcoholic beverage servers in the State of Indiana, USA, with a grant from Indiana University. Chi-squared, analysis of variance, and step-wise regression were used to examine the influence of personal factors, location factors, management policies and practices, and larger societal control efforts on willingness to over-serve. Our findings support the need to examine managements' economic motivation and servers' personal drinking patterns as motivations for serving beyond intoxication in future research.

Keywords:

• alcohol
• alcohol service
• bartenders
• economic motivation
• heavy drinkers
• intoxication
• over-serving

Notes

The journal's style utilizes the category substance abuse as a diagnostic category. Substances are used or misused; living organisms are and can be abused. Editor's note.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Denise M. Reiling

Denise M. Reiling is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Eastern Michigan University, USA. She earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from Michigan State University, USA, in 2000. Her specialization areas are medical sociology, the sociology of mental health/illness, and the social psychology of identity and deviant behavior. In addition to her work among bartenders, she does research among the Old Order Amish, an ethnoreligious group within the United States. Some of her publications appear in Youth & Society; the Journal of Rural Health; the Journal of Multicultural Nursing & Health; Drugs: Education, Prevention, & Policy; the Journal of Drug Education; the American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse; and the Drug & Alcohol Newsletter of the American Sociological Association.

Michael R. Nusbaumer

Michael R. Nusbaumer received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Western Michigan University in 1977. He is currently a Professor of Sociology at Indiana University-Purdue University at Fort Wayne. His recent publications have appeared in Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy; the Journal of Drug Education; the Drug & Alcohol Newsletter of the American Sociological Association; and the American Journal of Alcohol and Drug Abuse. His research interests center on definitions of deviant drinking and societal attempts at control.