College Student Participation in Risky Behaviors: Hazardous Drinking, Sleeping while Driving, and Low Sleep Quality

Abstract

College students have a high tendency to participate in risky behaviors, such as hazardous drinking and sleeping while driving, which could result from low sleep quality. Therefore, the purpose of the current study is to identify correlations between sleep quality, hazardous drinking, and sleeping while driving among a sample of college students and examine differences by demographic factors (i.e., race/ethnicity and gender). It is aimed to better understand correlations between these risky behaviors for further prevention and development of programs in the future. The study will provide associations between the three specific behaviors, while other studies have focused on one or two of the variables, but not all three. This secondary dataset is survey data collected from 1,228 participants enrolled in a personal health course (HLTH 1000) at East Carolina University in the Spring 2016 semester. The study found that male and White (non Hispanic) individuals had a higher AUDIT-C sumscore than other individuals. The study also found that those who had a higher AUDIT-C sumscore did have lower quality sleep and increased sleeping while driving episodes.