The Youth Alcohol Awareness and Education Foundation, Inc.—established by Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits to fund programs that support alcohol safety and underage drinking prevention—announced insights into drinking behaviors among South Florida teens, based on the results of a recent education and awareness pilot program conducted in seven Miami-Dade and Broward high schools. The survey was conducted as part of a pilot of EVERFI’s AlcoholEdu for High School online curriculum with 254 high school students, an initiative funded by the Foundation in partnership with Step Up For Students.
Students were measured on knowledge gains as well as shifts in behavior, attitudes, and habits around alcohol safety through pre- and post-course assessments and surveys, and compared against EVERFI’s national survey population of over 30,000 students from the 2016-2017 school year.
- 53 percent of high school students who took the course admitted to having had one alcoholic drink in the two weeks prior to taking the course. This is significantly higher than the national average reported by EverFi, where 33 percent of students admitted to having one drink in the 30 days prior to taking the survey.
- Participating students also demonstrated higher rates of drinking – 23 percent identifying themselves as light/moderate or heavy episodic drinkers compared to EverFi’s national average of 15 percent.
- As compared with the national survey population, a notable number of South Florida students indicated that they acquire alcohol through family or friends, and a significantly higher percentage of students bought alcohol from a store without being carded.
The good news is that after taking AlcoholEdu for High School, students increased their assessment scores by an average of 20 percent, indicating a meaningful knowledge gain from the course. In fact, an overwhelming majority of students reported that the course prepared them to: avoid riding in a vehicle driven by someone who’s been drinking; stop a friend from driving drunk; establish a plan ahead of time to make responsible decisions; resist social pressure to drink alcohol, and identify when someone has consumed too much alcohol.
“As a leader in our industry, we take our commitment to responsibility very seriously – and that includes the prevention of underage drinking,” said Wayne Chaplin, CEO of Southern Glazer’s.
“We work regularly with our trade partners and customers to reduce teen access to alcohol. However, because this is such an important issue, we wanted to go a step further – by bringing important skill building programs directly to students. We look forward to working with our partners Step Up For Students and EverFi to expand this program to 25 high schools and make an even greater positive impact on this important social issue.”
