RJA #6c: Field Research Options

Interview:
1. A doctor: to ascertain a professional opinion on the physical dangers of alcohol.

2. A social worker or psychologist to gain their perspective on the affects of teenagers drinking

Poll/Survey: of teenagers (age group TBD) to understand their level of alcohol consumption, any problems they face, and how alcohol affects them physical and mentally (problems at school etc)

Lecture/presentation: I would like to attend a lecture or presentation by either a toxicologist or biology lecturer relating to alcohol consumption and the inherent risks.

RJA #6b: Social Media and Multimedia

Social Media:
 Searched on blogcatalog.com
 Used the keyword alcohol teen dangers
 I tried using various keywords until I found the most suitable blogs
 Date : 2/24/2010
 Number of hits: 1593
 Relevance of hits: 2/5

http://www.blogcatalog.com/blogs/abuse-alcohol.html

 Searched on addictomatic.com
 Used various keywords, operators did not work well on this site. Final search used the keywords teen alcohol dangers
 Date: 2/24/2010
 Number of hits: actually not possible to know because answers returned from various sources such as Bing News, Digg and Wikio
 Relevance: 4/5

http://www.medicinenet.com/alcohol_and_teens/article.html

http://www.flickr.com/photos/morgankaysiphotography/4380160135/

http://teenrehab.blograpid.us/the-dangers-of-binge-drinking/

Multimedia:
 Searched on video search.com
 Used various search options such as keywords and operators. Best result using keywords alcohol teen dangers
 Date: 2/24/2010
 Number of hits: 66
 Relevance: 3/5. Many of the links did not work

http://www.videosurf.com/video/dangers-of-binge-drinking-alcohol-abuse-educational-video-30344306

RJA #6a: Websites–

Search Engine:
 Used altavista.com
 Used the keywords Alcohol, damage, psychological as required with any of the following words present: teen, teens, teenager, underage
 Date searched: 2/24/2010
 Number of hits: 4.5 million pages
 Relevance: 4/5
http://alcoholism.about.com/od/teens/a/blacer050216.htm
http://www.alcohol-drug.com/neuropsych.htm
http://www.marininstitute.org/Youth/teen_alcohol_use.htm

Meta search engine:
 Used cactisearch.com
 Used the keywords alcohol, affect, biological, damage, physiological, teenager as required. It website apparently didn’t allow Boolean type or the site was having issues as I received no hits but a lot of error messages. When I started removing search phrases it helped slightly but most results were not even relevant.
 Date searched: 2/24/2010
 Relevance: 1/5

Directory:
 Used Yahoo Directory
 Searched using various combinations of keywords such as alcohol, alcoholism, youths, teenager, mental, psychological etc
 Date searched: 2/24/2010
 # of hits:363 using the search: teenagers + alcohol
 Relevance: 3/5
www.psychologyinfo.com/depression/teens.htm
www.focusas.com/SubstanceAbuse.html

Invisible Web Search Tool
 Used incywincy.com
 Used keywords alcohol teen mental with best results, I used a variety of other keywords but non gave such a good response
 Date searched: 2/24/2010
 # of hits: 20,542
 Relevance: 1/5 Last time I checked, Webmd.com wasn’t invisible!
http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/alcohol-abuse/tc/teen-alcohol-and-drug-abuse-topic-overview

RJA #5c: Reference Articles–

I searched using many tools and websites including
Citizendium, Debatepedia, Digital Universe , Encyclopedia, Scholarpedia, Intute and MedBioWorld. Some of the websites were very difficult to use and most of the links they provided were either not relating directly to my topic or I had to pay to access the information.

The one website that actually helped was Classic Encyclopedia. I searched for 'teenagers + alcohol' and was provided with many links. The most useful of which was:

Alcoholism in Teenagers

http://teens.lovetoknow.com/Alcoholism_in_Teenager

Initial Author: MelissaJCorley
Recent Contributors: Charlotte Gerber

www.lovetoknow.com

4 June 2008.
© 2006-2010 LoveToKnow Corp.

RJA #5b: Periodical Articles

Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs

Volume 71, 2010 > Issue 1: January 2010

 

http://www.jsad.com/jsad/article/Alcohol_Use_and_Heavy_Episodic_Drinking_Prevalence_and_Predictors_Among_Nat/4412.html

 

Alcohol Use and Heavy Episodic Drinking Prevalence and Predictors Among National Samples of American Eighth- and Tenth-Grade Students

Megan E. Patrick, John E. Schulenberg

 

 

 

Special Report to the U.S. Congress on Alcohol and Health

http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/10report/intro.pdf

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

Public Health Service

National Institutes of Health

National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism

June 2010

 

 

NIAAA National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism

http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/Publications/AlcoholAlerts/

 

A DEVELOPMENTAL PERSPECTIVE ON UNDERAGE ALCOHOL USE

http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/AA78/AA78.htm

 

SYSTEMS BIOLOGY: The Solution to Understanding
Alcohol-Induced Disorders?

http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/AA75/AA75.htm

 

 

Underage Drinking—Highlights From
The
Surgeon General's Call to Action To Prevent and Reduce Underage Drinking

http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/AA73/AA73.htm

 

Underage Drinking:Why Do Adolescents Drink, What Are the Risks, and How Can Underage Drinking Be Prevented?

http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/AA67/AA67.htm

 

ALCOHOL'S DAMAGING EFFECTS ON THE BRAIN

http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/aa63/aa63.htm

 

My search start online at the MSCD.edu library website. I searched using the word 'alcohol'. From there I could use the suggested topics so my search technique was quite organic in that I started from one search and then followed various leads and links to find suitable material.

 

RJA #5a: Books

Author Cappello, Dominic.
Title Ten talks parents must have with their children about drugs and choices / Dominic Cappello and Xenia G. Becher.
Edition 1st ed.
Publisher New York : Hyperion, c2001.


Arterburn, Stephen, 1953-

Title How to talk to your kids about drugs / Stephen Arterburn and Jim Burns.

Publisher Eugene, Or. : Harvest House Publishers, c2007.



Alcohol / William Dudley, book editor.

Publisher San Diego, CA : Greenhaven Press, c2001.




Author Max, Tucker.

Title I hope they serve beer in hell / Tucker Max.

Publisher New York, : Citadel Press, c2009.



Title Alcohol : opposing viewpoints / Scott Barbour, book editor.

Publisher San Diego, Calif. : Greenhaven Press, c1998.

Series Opposing viewpoints series


Electronic Location http://www.netlibrary.com/urlapi.asp?action=summary&v=1&bookid=109803

Title Alcohol Addition: a medical dictionary, bibliography and annotated research guide to internet references.

Editors James N. Parker and Phillip Parker

Publisher San Diego, CA: ICON Health Publications, c2004



The above books were found by searching the Fargo, ND Public Library website.
Keywords used were alcohol, danger, physical and psychological. I search on 2/19/2010. I initially received 137 hits. This was then narrowed down by using related subjects suggested by the website. The initial relevance of hits would be rated at a 2, increasing to a 4 once I made revisions.

RJA #4c: Research Question Check

http://tad19.blogspot.com/2010/02/rja-3c-research-question.html#comment-form

http://darciemcdougall.blogspot.com/2010/02/rj-3c.html#comment-form

RJA# 4b: Search Strings

Search Engine Math Searchs

+physical +psychological + effects +underage +alcohol

+teens +dangers + drinking

"side effects of underage drinking"

Boolean Searchs

physical AND psychological AND effects ADN alcohol and ~teens

alcohol AND ~danger* NEAR teens

alcohol AND (teens OR underage)

RJA #4a: Keywords

Physical, brain, body, organs, cell

mental, psychological

danger, affets, effects, harm, harmful, negative

alcohol, booze, drinking, binge, beer, wines, spirits, cider, units

RJA #3c: Research Question

What are the physical and psychological dangers of underage drinking?

Why do teenagers drink, even if they are aware of the risks?

Does underage drinking lead to other risky behavior?

What are the social and psychological reasons for underage drinking?

RJA #3b: Research Topic Focus

Is underage drinking a problem?
What physical problems does it cause?
What psychological problems does it cause?
What are the possible solutions?
What solutions have been tried already and did they have any affect?
Why do young teens drink to excess?
What can be done to solve the problem?

RJA #3a: Research Topic Exploration

My initial research was done online as I have not been able to get to the library.
I searched on Delicious to see what others had found on this topic. I am a novice at using this website but I thought I would find something useful. I found some links to blogs and people personal opinions, but nothing that I could really use.

Of course Google never lets me down and once I made a few searches I found hundreds of pages. The problem there is that I need to filter out the excess information and find pages that are pertinent to my needs. By reading some of the pages I found that underage drinking is a problem around the world and many experts believe it causes physical, social and physiological problems. It would also appear that underage drinking can be more harmful than alcohol consumption by adults.

I have never used Google Scholar before and I was pleasantly surprised by it. I found many links to articles and journals which touched upon my topic. Google Blog Search on the other hand was not very useful. I never really read blogs and I don’t think I could cite them as source when writing a scholarly paper.

Time for Plan B

Well folks,

my initial topic was deemed political rather than scholarly and so it needs to be changed.

I have now decided to study the physical and psychological effects of alcohol on teenagers.