CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
5.4 SITUATING PERCEIVED NORMS IN A STUDENT’S LIFE
5.4.4 E XPERIENCES BEFORE E NTERING THE U NIVERSITY C ONTEXT
Thus far, in this section I have discussed the reciprocal influences of the descriptive norm, the injunctive norm and personal disposition on personal drinking behaviour. However, these possible influences on behaviour cannot be viewed as merely static or continuous, i.e. as playing a role at one specific time in a student’s career or as always playing the same role. Furthermore, students’
alcohol consumption and perceptions are not static, but will fluctuate and evolve during their time at university. As mentioned before, a potentially important period for the acquisition of social norms is when students initially arrive at university. Yet, students do not arrive ‘culture free’, but bring with them their past experiences and in all probability well‐established identities. In accordance, this section concerns itself with a third most important factor that came to the fore during the regression analysis, namely students’ drinking behaviour prior to university.
As Bourdieu theorises (Maton, 2008: 51), an individual’s behaviour at any given time is structured by various sources, all of which continuously contribute to the structure of their habitus, the essence of their identity. Students’ habitus is concurrently structured by their current experiences at university as well as their experiences before enrolling at university. As an individual therefore moves through time and different fields, their habitus is constantly being structured by their current circumstances. However, their habitus already has structure due to previous circumstances they have experienced. Subsequently, at any given time that a person finds him‐ or herself within a certain social space, they bring with them their previous experiences. These experiences influence their current choices and perceptions within that social field. At the same time, that social field is again influencing them, which will in future again influence their perceptions and choices.
In my study, important signifiers of previous experiences are drinking behaviour during high school as well as perceptions of student behaviour prior to enrolment at university. According to Bourdieu, these factors and other previous life experiences would have given an individual’s habitus a certain structure, which will influence his or her perceptions and choices at university (1977: 72). Specifically, there is the possibility that both perceptions before becoming a student and/or drinking behaviour before enrolment would influence students’ conception of their life at university, the friends they choose and, ultimately, the perceptions they entertain of the behaviour of their student peers. Students may therefore come to university with a predisposition to structuring their social field in a certain way through the choices they make according to their habitus. When arriving at university, students probably already have a certain attitude towards drinking and subscribe to a certain level of drinking. In accordance with this, the consideration of average alcohol consumption during the last year of high school was of critical importance in contemplating the influence of the perceived drinking norm of close friends on personal alcohol consumption in relation to students’ personal disposition.
High‐school alcohol use was identified as the third strongest predictor of current alcohol consumption. It also signifies prior consumption and initial approval of alcohol consumption, which will undoubtedly influence differential peer associations (Leibsohn, 1994: 177) and, furthermore, models for imitation and differential reinforcement of consequent behaviour. Stated in simpler terms, as the qualitative and quantitative results reflect, previous behaviour will influence the friends students choose, which will subsequently influence their behaviour. This view is supported by my survey findings that suggest greater consistency between own behaviour and the perceived behaviour of friends compared to more distant reference groups.
The perception of friends’ drinking also acts as a mediator between personal drinking and the perceived campus drinking norm. The influence the campus drinking norm has on personal drinking will therefore largely be through, and dependent on, an individual’s perception of their friends’ drinking. The perception of friends’ drinking may again largely be reliant on the friends students associate with, a choice possibly and partly made on the grounds of perceived similarities also regarding approval of drinking and drinking behaviour even before students enrol at
Stellenbosch University. Consequently, if students mainly associate with peer clusters on the grounds of attitude and behaviour formed prior to university enrolment, and the perceptions of the drinking norm are partially dependent on the peer cluster with which students associate, then the perceptions of the drinking norm can be viewed as resulting partly from previous experiences prior to enrolment that shaped students’ approval of drinking and drinking behaviour.
First‐year students are initially faced by an ‘established’ campus culture. They encounter a vast collection of people and circumstances, which the majority of students may not know nor yet understand. More specifically, they move from one support system (e.g. family, established school friends) to another (university/college residence, new friends), which may cause a degree of social anxiety at first, accompanied by a need to fit in. Importantly, the socialising process of social norming is in progress through their engagement with the university context. As the previous sections reflected, a very important aspect in relation to this new cultural context is the associated social norms, which for some will be new, exciting and appealing, and for others in conflict with previous values. Individuals’ perceptions of student behaviour, as well as their own behaviour and approval before becoming students themselves, are important for the creation of dispositions, the building blocks of Bourdieu’s habitus (Maton, 2008: 51). However, although differential association with similar peers and the consequent imitation and internalisation of norms partly explain the association between the perceptions of peer behaviour and personal behaviour, it does not explain why students would perceive the behaviour/approval of peers as more permissive than their own.
The question consequently arises whether overestimated permissive perceptions of the university social environment have the ability to bring about change in students’ drinking behaviour after their arrival at university, even though it seems as if perceptions are partly based on, and a consequence of, previous experiences before enrolment. In the absence of longitudinal research, one can only speculate to what degree prior behaviour would play a role in friend selection, perceptions of the social norm and future behaviour. Research in the university context has nevertheless produced evidence that ‘[high school] alcohol . . . use may be [an] important determining factor in the choice of new college (university) friends’ (Leibsohn, 1994: 177) and that the perception of exaggerated self‐other differences in terms of drinking is a precursor for behavioural change (Carey et al., 2007: 393; Prentice & Miller, 1993: 248, Study 3). One small‐scale study found significant differences between male and female students in terms of behavioural change and the internalisation of the norm. The ‘results for men are consistent with theorising about conformity pressures in social groups; the results for women . . . suggest increasing alienation over the course of the semester’ (Prentice & Miller, 1993: 249, Study 3).
Results from my study nevertheless identify the role of previous behaviour as quite important, when one considers that the regression model controls for the influence of the descriptive and the injunctive drinking norm of friends and students in general, as well as personal attitude. Even when the influences of these factors on drinking behaviour are accounted for, previous drinking prior to enrolment still accounts for unique variation in personal drinking. Bringing these two ideas together then, one can conclude that even though previous heavy‐drinking behaviour and a more permissive attitude most probably influence a student’s behaviour at university, perception of a conservative peer norm rather than a heavy drinking norm, may influence the degree to which students act on their attitudes and in accordance with their previous behaviour. Other research also suggests that personal attitudinal influences on behaviour are most prominent in situations also characterised by supportive peer norms (Perkins et al., 1996: 962).