Dr. Clapp discussing the characteristics of drinking events.
Dr. John Clapp of USC’s Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work shared his research surrounding the system dynamics of drinking events in the field of high risk alcohol prevention. Dr. Clapp discussed how social and physical environmental factors impact drinking behaviors. The elements of drinking events were broken down into the components of environmental wetness (i.e., social norms of drinking, alcohol availability), group wetness (i.e group drinking desires), the desired state/motivations of the drinker, and alcohol metabolism. Professor Clapp also gave examples of multiple college drinking events with negative outcomes, such as a riot which took place at UC Santa Barbara during a social event, Deltopia, in 2014.
One of his research projects on this topic, the Bar Crawl Study, was centered in Pacific Beach near UC San Diego. In this study, participants were randomly selected going into a bar, breathalyzed, and interviewed going in and out of the bar; a follow-up interview also took place the following day. Factors taken into account included how crowded the bar was, the headcount, rate of service, and how liberal the drink service was. The study found that the environment predicted drinking levels were independent of personal characteristics and intentions.
One of the models Dr. Clapp used for his projects.
The Social Ecological Model guiding the research.
Another study, The Bar and Party Project, focused on the relationships among individual characteristics, social and physical environments, and drinking behaviors and problems. This project involved observing both bar and party environments, interviewing bar patrons and partygoers, and collecting participants’ Breath Alcohol Concentration (BrAC) samples.The model that was developed from this project took into account the desired level of intoxication, decision making, alcohol intake rate, metabolism, and the BrAC rate. This model was then expanded to include the impact of interventions during drinking events. In a bar environment, lower BrAC rates were seen to be achieved by intervening in the environment. In a party environment, lower BrAC rates were seen to be achieved by intervening on the individual level.
Dr. Clapp emphasized that a large component of broadening the scope of drinking event research was the technology used to track the intoxication and whereabouts of participants. Current measurement tools are often cumbersome to participants and serve as a barrier to data collection. Breathalyzers can only be utilized 10 minutes after a participant’s last drink and Transdermal Alcohol Concentration (TAC) measurements require waiting 45 minutes for a reading. Another potential measurement tool was Fitbit (an exercise tool); to predict geographic location and drinking levels. This is due to a person’s heart rate as a potential indicator of alcohol intake. As technology advances, the scope of data collection for these studies on drinking events will be widened. Overall, Dr.Clapp emphasized the impact this research can have on creating interventions targeting issues of alcohol poisoning, drunk driving, and sexual assault through altering problematic drinking trajectories and intervening at different levels (i.e., individual, group, environment).
The potential consequences of high risk drinking.
