Study finds that coed dormitory housing at colleges increases rates of binge drinking and sex.
It’s no secret to students that coed dorms are more fun than same-sex dorms. But they can also fuel very unhealthy behavior that might otherwise be moderated.
A new study finds university students in coed housing are 2.5 times more likely to binge drink every week. And no surprise, they’re also likely to have more sexual partners, the study found. Also, pornography use was higher among students in coed dorms.
Some 90 percent of U.S. college dorms are now coed.
Of course only a backwards religious fundamentalist would suggest doing anything with such a finding. We all know that these behaviors are what college is all about and that’s supposed to be real funny.
pi.info 1:53 pm on November 17, 2009 Permalink |
I looked at this study and rejected it.
Anecdotally, I was in co-ed dorms for two years and there was zero sexual or party activity going on. Some of the girls upstairs were sexually active, but they all had boyfriends back home and returned to them ‘religiously’ each weekend. It should be noted however that I choose to live in those co-ed dorms in the ‘quiet section’ of campus housing where the least amount of partying was going on.
Furthermore:
1) Some of this study makes absolutely no sense and my bs detector went off. Why would residents of co-ed dormitories watch more pornography than those in single-sex dormitories? Such an assertion does, however, make sense if you have preconceptions that co-ed dorms lead to random debauch and sinfulness….
2) The authors are all from or closely associated with Brigham Young University, ie, a bastion of Mormom conservatism that would strongly predispose them to these kinds of conclusions.
I will be consider these studies more seriously if they are conducted by researchers at other universities with a less religious pedigree.
abunoor 3:18 pm on November 17, 2009 Permalink |
Obviously I don’t have any way to deeply analyze the methodology of the study.
The conclusions seem obvious and uncontroversial based on my own experience.
Of course none of this means that everyone in a coed dorm is binge drinking and/or having sex.
I think challenging the study is good, but rejecting it simply because if comes out of a religiously affiliated university without any evidence that the particular researcher’s work has been found to be biased or not credible by other scientists is unfair.
pi.info 4:26 pm on November 17, 2009 Permalink |
by other scientists is unfair.
Fair comment, though I still maintain deep skepticism.
Some further thoughts on my experience: The colleges usually give you an option to sign up for the ‘loud’ dorms or the ‘quiet’ dorms, and these terms are usually proxies for more reserved/socially conservative and more adventurous/high risk.
In my ‘quiet’ dorm 4 guys downstairs/ 4 women upstairs, two of the men were immigrants from more reserved, socially conservative cultures. And my roommate was the high achieving, substance-free kind of kid, while I was a serious student. Upstairs, one of the girls was a socially conservative Catholic (who went home to visit her boyfriend on the weekend), and a girl who was dating a “Persian” guy at home and who was interesting in all things ‘Persian’ – culture, music, history etc. She was also learning to read and write Arabic, which in retrospect, makes me wonder about a Muslim angle (though the words ‘Muslim’ and ‘Islam’ never came up). And then the other two girls were “geeks” who had no sexuality in their ’social constructs.’
I guess the point of this is to show that there are a variety of American sub-cultures -both secular and religious – that are natively resistant to bad behavior and value ‘good qualities,’ and a Muslim student would probably do well to seek out these other sub-cultures to find a comfortable mixed social space that will not inevitably devolve into debauch.
muffy 4:21 pm on November 17, 2009 Permalink |
I’m not surprised by the results of the study. In fact, I would have predicted the same thing. However, I suspect that it’s due to self-selection. Namely, people who go to co-ed dorms are more likely to be party-types to begin with.
abunoor 4:25 pm on November 17, 2009 Permalink |
The professor who conducted the study does not seem to think that is the case (it seems because such a small percentage choose to request single gender dorms that many of the people in single gender dorms did not choose to be there but there just wasn’t anymore space in the coed dorms), but that is certainly an angle that one would pursue in trying to look deeper into the question.
Dan 5:52 pm on November 17, 2009 Permalink |
And in other words, same-sex dorms increase homosexuality. Just ask the Saudis.