Drinking patterns and attitudes toward alcoholism of Australian human-service students.

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Abstract
A drinking survey and the Attitudes toward Alcoholism Questionnaire were administered to 1449 first- and final-year students in medicine, law, pharmacy, social work and applied psychology at Queensland University [Australia] and to police-academy, religious-seminary and nursing-school students in the Brisbane area in 1980. Of the students 89% drank at least once in the previous year, 56% at least once a month and 27% once a week; 1.4% were daily drinkers. Most students (68%) drank < 20 g absolute alcohol/day; 3% drank > 60 g/day. The women students drank less than the men (a mean of 8.7 vs. 20.3 g/day) and more were light drinkers (79 vs. 58%) while more men drank more than 60 g/day (6 vs. 0.7%). Final-year students, those who believed that religion was not important to them and law and police students drank more than those in comparison groups. As measured by the Attitudes toward Alcoholism Questionnaire, police and seminary students, men students, 1st-year students, and students who regarded religion as important were more moralistic and less positive in their attitudes toward alcoholism. Social work and psychology students and final-year students who did not consider religion as important had significantly more positive attitudes. Nurses, women and nonreligious students were more likely to believe that alcoholism is caused by psychological or physical illness, while social work and psychology students were not. The results are compared with those of Australian and other English-speaking groups.