“Liquor before beer, you're in the clear”: binge drinking and other risk behaviours among fraternity/sorority members and their non-Greek peers

Abstract

Objective: To examine “college drinking culture” and explore alcohol use and other variables among a sample of US college students.

Methods: Bivariate crosstabulation and logistic regression analyses were used to examine associations between alcohol use, gender, Greek membership and risk behaviours among a random sample of 823 undergraduates who completed a health behaviour survey.

Results: Respondents who binged were significantly more likely to be male and belong to a fraternity/sorority. Fraternity bingers were significantly more likely to engage in physical fights (p < 0.05) than non-Greek male bingers. Sorority bingers were significantly more likely to be injured (p < 0.01), drive under the influence of alcohol (DUI) (p < 0.001), be sexually victimised (p < 0.01) and engage in unwanted sex (p < 0.05) than non-Greek female bingers. Fraternity members who binged frequently (≥3 times in 2 weeks) were significantly more likely to DUI (p < 0.01) and engage in unprotected sex (p < 0.05) than were those who binged intermittently. Sorority members who binged frequently were significantly more likely to DUI (p < 0.05) than were those who binged intermittently.

Conclusion: Prevention efforts likely to be effective in changing binge drinking among college students should be gender specific, consider peer drinking norms, target “windows of risk” and be tailored to the campus’ culture of drinking.

• Binge drinking
• risk behaviours
• fraternity/sorority members

Acknowledgements

Data collection was supported by the Center for Alcohol and Substance Education in association with the Division of Prevention Research, Department of Psychiatric Medicine, University of Virginia School of Medicine.

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the article. Preparation of this manuscript was supported by the Social Science Research Center of Mississippi State University and the Stanford University School of Medicine through NIMH grant MH63643 (Cheryl Gore-Felton, P.I.).