The social basis of alcohol and drug use in collegiate settings is widely recognized and yet one of the most significant interpersonal developments on college campuses in recent times, the proliferation and use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), is taking place with scarce attention to the public health implications of this phenomenon. At a time when alcohol and drug use among college students is a concerning public health problem it is currently unclear how ICTs, especially digital personal computers and mobile cellular phones, are influencing these developments. This anthropological study, """"""""Information and Communication Technologies in Collegiate Drug Use Practices,"""""""" will investigate the integration of ICTs into collegiate alcohol and drug use behaviors.
The specific aims of this project are: To describe how college students use ICTs to organize, document and evaluate social gatherings involving alcohol and drug use;to document and analyze how college students employ ICTs to enact protective strategies related to alcohol and drug use;and to identify potential modes of alcohol and drug abuse prevention that incorporate collegiate ICT practices.
These aims will be accomplished by utilizing several data collection techniques from cultural anthropology, including unstructured and semi-structured interviews and observations. During the first phase of research, exploratory unstructured interviews with 30 undergraduates will investigate the integration of interpersonal communication technologies into the socio cultural life of college students, with a special emphasis on the utilization of personal computers and mobile phones in social interactions, including alcohol and drug use activities. These interviews will allow us to identify a range of cultural practices and experiences related to the use of ICTs, to delimit relevant cultural domains for further investigation, and to identify public, social settings where ICT mediated collegiate alcohol and drug use takes place. Findings from this phase of the investigation will be used to develop the next stage of research which will be organized around semi-structured interviews and observations. Thirty in-depth interviews will be conducted to provide a systematic investigation of major cultural practices and examine the existing uses of ICTs that both facilitate and create barriers to alcohol abuse and drug use. In addition, researchers will conduct observations of a range of public social settings that exploratory research indicates are key to understanding ICTs and collegiate drinking and drug use behaviors.
Although college students utilize information and communication technologies (ICTs) for a variety of interpersonal social purposes, there is little empirical data regarding how these technologies, especially mobile phones, are being integrated into alcohol and drug use practices. As a result, the research detailed in this proposal will address a significant gap in our understanding of collegiate alcohol and drug use. This research is crucial in identifying promising points of prevention that utilize ICTs that can be incorporated into campus-based alcohol and drug abuse prevention programs.
| Quintero, Gilbert (2012) Problematizing 'drugs': A cultural assessment of recreational pharmaceutical use among young adults in the US. Contemp Drug Probl 39:491 |
