A quantitative study on the students of Liverpool John Moores University which investigates the effects and influences that alcohol can have on a person's mental health

Abstract

There is a close link between alcohol use and mental health. Alcohol misuse can contribute to the worsening of symptoms of multiple mental health problems. Drinking has become a large part of the student culture. Much of this research aims to highlight the links between alcohol and mental health and make more students aware of the detrimental effects that alcohol can have on the body mentally. This study used a quantitative approach and used an online questionnaire as the method for data collection. Participants were recruited through a social media advert posted on Facebook. The study had 31 respondents, and this made it difficult for the researcher to establish any clear trends or if there were any patterns shown it was difficult to see whether they were coincidence. Also, due to the sample size being so small, the study's findings were not as representative as the researcher would have liked. The data produced by the questionnaires was analysed using SPSS software, where graphs and chi-square tables were created to make comparisons and see if there were clear trends between questions. The results from this study showed that there was an initial trend between the amount of alcohol consumed and the emotions that students were feeling. However, after producing the chi-square results, the P value of each chart (approximately 0.05) suggested the results were more than likely to be coincidence or due to the sample size. A large portion of participants in this study said they were consumers of alcohol and a lot of those who responded yes to drinking alcohol were the younger students aged 18-24. Once the researcher came to the end of the study, there were a few recommendations to be made to help raise awareness on the subject. These included implementing more educational campaigns to make students more aware of the dangers of drinking, especially binge drinking; having further promotion on drinking advice and limits that are already in place. Finally, the researcher believed that this study topic would benefit from further studies, which take a qualitative approach looking more specifically into the attitudes and reasoning as to why drinking is such a big part of the student culture.