Lowering Drinking Age Survey

1. Introduction

Do you usually drink alcohol? When you drink, how do you go back home? Do you think about what age people should be allowed to drink alcohol at? In our society, we have many problems that are affected by alcohol. For example, when drinkers are drunk, they usually fight for stupid reasons. Alcohol is bad for their health. They may have an accident easily and they may commit crimes. In “Addressing underage drinking” the author reports, “the fact is alcohol is No.1 youth drug problem in America and more young people die in America” (n.d., para.3). Some teenagers want to change the drinking age from 21 to 18. They claim that they can be soldiers and die for their country when they are 18, so why can they not drink? They do not think that they are too young to control the limit of drinking. Then, when they are drunk, they may cause many problems.

2. Purpose

Our group, EAP1 A, decided to examine why people who are 18 want to start drinking alcohol. I wanted to find out the relationship between gender and age of people who want to change the drinking law. Moreover, I want to know people’s thinking about drinking under age. Furthermore, I want to examine people who were worried about the drinking problem at Carbondale/SIUC.

3. Hypotheses

I had three hypotheses about this problem. First, people who are under 18 would want to change the drinking age from 21 to 18 because they want to be cool people in their opinion. Second, men would say they started drinking earlier than women. Finally, only young people would want to change this law.

4. Methods and Procedures

Our group was supposed to ask sixty-six people who are of different ages and genders in Carbondale in order to learn about different ideas. But in fact we got 49 surveys and all were from SIU students. We prepared a survey that had 9 questions. These questions were mostly yes or no questions, and one question that asked them to write a short answer. It was very easy survey to understand and took a short time to answer.

5. Data and Chart

Connect here http://eap1.blogspot.com/2008/02/practice-survey-results_27.html

6. Results

From the research, people who are under 20 drink alcohol slightly more than people who are not. Thirty-two out of thirty-six of people who are under 21 (88.9%) drink alcohol. The same percentage of males and females do binge drinking. However, drinkers who do not binge (79.6%) are more than people who binge (20.4%). Females started drinking a little bit earlier than males. 84.7% of people think that too much drinking is not a problem in Carbondale. Forty-one out of forty-nine (83.6%) believe that a little alcohol is good but too much is bad. Over half of people (69.3%) think that drinking age should not be lowered, but 30.6% of people think that it should be lowered.

7. Conclusion and Discussion

I believed that people who are under 18 would want to change the drinking age from 21to 18 because they want to be cool people in their opinion. However, the research showed that nobody thought drinking alcohol made him or her a cool person. I was surprised because I thought they wanted to be cool people, but the result showed that their feeling about alcohol is that a little alcohol is good but too much is bad. I was also surprised that females started drinking earlier than males. This is a shocking number for me, because I believed strongly that males started drinking earlier than females. However, I forgot to think about physical girls. Girls grow up earlier than boys; that may make girls try to drink alcohol earlier than boys. The last hypothesis was that only young people would want to change drinking law. The research showed that not only young people wanted to change the drinking law, but also people who are over 21. However, the number of people who did not want to change the law was higher than people who wanted to change. I think people are still worried about problems that may happen when young people drink alcohol.

If I were to do this survey again, I would want to ask not only SIU students but also workers, because most SIU students are 18-25 years old. I want to know the different opinions in different ages. Maybe if I ask older people, I may get some good opinions from them. One of my questions in this survey is about opinion. Respondents have to write a short answer. It was difficult for me to conclude the answer. I want to change to yes/no question. I think it would be easier to count the answers.

8. Reference

Addressing underage drinking. (n.d.). why21.org. Retrieved on February 5, 2008, from http://www.why21.org/under21/

9. Appendix

Copy of survey http://eap1.blogspot.com/2008/02/practice-survey-results.html