Social Psychology

Gravitational Waves.

What progress is being made today?

Gravitational Waves.

What progress is being made today?

Social Psychology

Does exposure to alcohol at a young age lead to alcoholism in later years of life?

The independent variable is the exposure to alcohol; this can be anything from consuming alcohol, to fetching an alcoholic beverage for a third party person. A young age is considered under the age of 18. The dependent variable is whether the participant becomes an alcoholic at some point in their life.

It is hypothesised that at under the age of 18, exposure to alcohol will lead to alcoholism in later years of life. If the hypothesis is correct then it is expected that children exposed to alcohol will become an alcoholic when older.

The participants will be both male and female and must be below the age of 18. Once they have reached the age of 18 they will be monitored throughout their life for signs of alcoholism. Participants will be randomly selected from within certain cultures. One end of the scale of culture will be a very conservative lifestyle where exposure will be zero or very little such as observing people drinking in public or on TV. The other end of the scale of culture will be a non conservative lifestyle where parents often drink heavily in front of children and alcohol consumption is all around their daily life.

Testers will determine the level of exposure in each group and will have it ranging from conservative to liberal all within the cultural traits of the group as well. To actually measure exposure tester's can measure how often children are exposed in terms of 'ticks', a tick can be anything to underage drinking to fetching dad a beer. To measure whether or not the participant becomes an alcoholic, the no. of standard drinks consumed per week can be obtained when adult hood is reached. This can be simply given to the tester by the participant. At this stage, ensuring the participant is unaware of what is being tested is irrelevant as the exposure should have already had its affect. This would fall under the ratio scale category.

Controls to be used will be having as many participants as possible and equal ratio of boys and girls in each category, e.g. one of each in the conservative lifestyle and likewise for the non - conservative lifestyle.

Because each subjects can only be tested once in their life this experiment is a between subjects design.