Study into student drinking reveals five biggest boozing counties

Students have been enjoying an over-indulgence in alcohol since around the time of Adam and Eve, but a recent survey shows which students enjoy it more than most.

Discover Magazine carried out a survey among 3,500 third level students attending UCD from right around the country and some interesting results came from their research. Firstly, Clare, Cork, Waterford, Kilkenny and Dublin students in UCD represent the biggest boozers within the college, but they also delved further into the reasons why students go to town on the sauce. Firstly, and perhaps most surprisingly, they found that most aspects of family background were not associated with student drinking. “We find relatively small effects of parental background variables on how much their college attending children drink. Neither father’s education, mothers’ age, whether a parent is still married, and parental incomes have any statistically significant effects on students’ drinking,” the paper revealed. There was however, one major exception with a student’s parents and older siblings drank exerting a strong effect. “We find that drinking of mothers significantly impacts the number of drinks consumed by both female and male students about equally. But drinking of fathers appears only to influence drinking of their college attending sons.” Boys who attended an all-boy’s school, or a boarding school, also went on to drink more in college. So Irish students drink a lot (who knew?), and here is the breakdown for UCD students. Pic credit: Discover Magazine