Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Availability

Open Access Thesis

Keywords

Drinking of alcoholic beverages--Research--Methodology; Depression, Mental--Research--Methodology; Anonymous persons; Self-evaluation; Academic theses;

Abstract

This research examined the impact of anonymity on self reports of alcohol consumption and depressive symptoms. Participants (N=363) were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: (1) Non anonymous or (2) Anonymous. All participants were administered the BDI and the MAST. Compared to the non anonymous group, those in the anonymous groups had significantly different higher means on the depression inventories. Women yielded significantly higher depression score means than men, but no significant differences were found between mean and women for alcohol use or between anonymous and non anonymous conditions. The level of alcohol use by both college men and women was clearly within the alcohol abuse range as defined by the MAST. These results suggest that studies on depression and alcohol use by college students may yield very different results than studies on other populations.

Year of Submission

2009

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Department of Psychology

First Advisor

John Somervill

Second Advisor

Andrew Gilpin

Third Advisor

John E. Williams

Comments

If you are the rightful copyright holder of this thesis and wish to have it removed from the Open Access Collection, please submit a request to scholarworks@uni.edu and include clear identification of the work, preferably with URL.

Date Original

2009

Object Description

1 PDF file (49 leaves)

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

Included in

Psychology Commons

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