Emerging Adults, Alcohol & the College Experience

The following literature review and research proposal involves a communication pedagogy approach about the ideals and experiences of consuming alcohol by college students (Beck and Socha, 2014). Participants in this study will be undergraduate college students from Old Dominion University (ODU) in Norfolk, Virginia and will be supervised by an elected board of Health Communication experts. Professors and adjunct instructors will make up the board of Health Communication experts who will develop and oversee a three-course curriculum with 6-credits upon completion, which will be mandatory for all incoming freshman and graduating seniors. The program will be referred to as the Emerging Adult, Attitude and Alcohol Communication (AAC) studies. Upon ODU acceptance, freshman will take the 1-credit Introduction to AAC during the first semester and the 2-credit History of AAC in the second. Finally, seniors will take the 3-credit Responsibility and Recovery AAC as core coursework, required for the completion of a bachelor’s level degree. Along with the experimental curriculum, qualitative data will be gathered and organized through narrative-interview surveys (see Appendix) by ODU graduate level students seeking advanced degrees in the fields of Communication, Psychology, and Higher Education. An initial timeframe for study is set to begin in the fall of 2020, in which case monthly progress reports will be assessed by the board up through the summer of 2021. If the board deems the program to predict future success, as well as meeting eligible academic, community, student, faculty, and financial conditions, then the proposal would benefit from a longitudinal approach, meaning 8 to 12 years of research (Beck, 2018).https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/arts_and_letters/1011/thumbnail.jp