College Drinking as an Epidemic Model
When college drinking culture is analyzed, it is generally noted to be destructive and characterized by binge drinking and subsequently dangerous behaviors. The emergence of this culture in the college environment is often studied and recognized as a general atmosphere, fostered by a continued excess of parties riddled with easy access to alcohol, even when one is under the age of 21. A paper published in the Journal of Biological Dynamics, titled Campus Drinking: an epidemiological model, characterizes the phenomenon as an epidemic model, with three distinct groups of drinkers which interact and influence each other and an equilibrium, which ensures the drinking culture never swings too far left, into submission, or right, into out of control chaos.
This article characterizes three groups: non-drinkers (those who haven’t consumed alcohol for an extended period of time), social drinkers (those who drink in a occasionally and in moderation and do not pose any sort of threat to themselves or others), and problem drinkers (those who drink to excess and have negative consequences for themselves and others). These three groups are said to interact in a way they influence each other to switch from group to group. This model in a way can be viewed as, if one seeing the drinking culture as a disease that poses a threat and should be eliminated, like the problem drinkers are those infected and the non-drinkers agree like a cure. The social drinkers sit in the middle unaffected, but sway one way or the other depending on who they are around. A rate at which the drinking habits are kept in check, whether R is above or below 1 resulting in a diminishing or increase in drinking culture, can be determined by looking at the number of each type of drinker and how many in an opposing group they interact with, as well as thee rates or probability with which one group transitions to the other.
This is an intriguing model with which to consider the epidemic of drinking on college campuses as it seems highly appropriate and is a way to apply a mathematical concept and look for definitive equilibriums for the model. Though there are many compounding factors that could not possibly all be accounted for and the impact of each cannot be truly known for everyone, such as age, academic class rank, or socioeconomic status. It is still an interesting model to consider the interactions that nondrinkers and problem drinkers especially have on each other because it especially seems more likely that a problem drinker would negatively affect a nondrinker, than for a nondrinker to convert a problem drinker to a sober lifestyle, at least while still in college. This model also seems as though there wouldn’t be the case where eventually all would convert to either “infected” or “cured” after a finite set of steps as an epidemic model usually results in. It seems even if it swayed towards problem drinkers, there would be nondrinkers who happily stand by their choice and never choose to drink, or there would always be problem drinkers if it trended towards nondrinkers.
Article Link: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/17513750801911169