findings of the research to her were related to racial disparities within a given setting. “Neighborhoods where individuals are more accepting of getting drunk were associated with greater binge drinking for whites (but) not blacks. Further, for whites, more cohesive communities and more disorders were associated with more binge drinking. We did not identify a significant predictor of binge drinking for blacks,” she said.
Although African Americans were found to be the least accepting of drunk behavior, they were also found to live in the areas with the highest rates of disorder — followed by Hispanics and Caucasians. According to Chauhan, these results contradict the conclusions of previous studies, which have found a positive relationship between disorder and binge drinking, likely because previous studies considered only individual self-reports of disorder rather than ratings provided by the overall community.
“We know very little about what factors are associated with binge drinking among blacks, which mean we do not know where to effectively intervene. Future research should try to find correlates of problematic drinking among blacks.”
Chauhan also emphasized that the results from her study may not be universal, and added that “New York neighborhoods are particularly dense and it may be that these findings may not translate to non-urban areas.”
