Output details

Alcohol : through our eyes : young people's representations of drinking in Scotland

Alcohol: Through Our Eyes is a knowledge exchange book for professionals working with young people and alcohol. It is the result of a two-year qualitative research project developed by Glasgow Centre for Population Health, Alcohol Focus Scotland and funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation that investigated young men and women’s alcohol usage and their transitions to adulthood in Glasgow.

Hackett devised 'user created content' through creative data gathering methods from eight activity-based focus groups to find out how young men and women between the ages of 16 and 30 were drinking through the transition. Hackett devised a visual methodology using comic strip (draw and talk) in the focus groups with the aim of contextualising drinking within the linked experiences of young adulthood and the enactment of gender identities. Participants were asked to draw a ‘typical night out drinking’. The younger groups drew an example of their present drinking and how they might drink in the future, while twenty-five to thirty year olds drew an example of both their present and past experiences. Participants then explained their drawings. These were recorded for data analysis with Hackett, artist, and two public health research specialists, Seaman and Edgar.

The drawings as research data highlighted alternative perspectives of young adult alcohol consumption and associated risk. The drawings revealed why young adults drink as they currently do by connecting with aspiration and the fulfillment of identities in which alcohol is connected but not central. The method allowed a less verbally confident group of young people with insecure attachments to work and education, to reflect their experiences informing the research and related campaign.

The research contributed to the development of a public funded campaign to reduce harm amongst young adult drinkers called ‘Playsafe’ http://css.dev2.999design.com/playsafe/drink_safe.html informed by the Creating Better Stories report http://www.gcph.co.uk/publications/325_creating_better_stories_alcohol_and_gender_in_transitions_to_adulthood pp 23-4; 45-73