Family Structure and Risk Behavior - Article Example

The present research can be helpful to social workers in identifying how different children belonging to different ethnicities tend to view the concept of self-esteem and how this view is motivating them to indulge in drinking behavior.

The connection between conceptualizing differences in self-esteem will help social workers in treating different individuals in a different manner. In the present study, the researchers tried to provide answers to different research questions. They tried to identify how self-esteem, as well as collective self-esteem, helped in prediction drinking behaviors among students belonging to the Korean and the Chinese ethnicity and these findings were compared with the findings on the same subject when the target population was White American college students.

They even tried to identify whether there was a positive relationship between global self-esteem and drinking behaviors of Chinese, Koreans and White Americans.  Literature Review The author did not perform a formal literature review though the author cited various resources that were related to the topic in the introduction section. Most of the researches were outdated and only a few studies that were cited were quite recent. But the resources cited were quite helpful in understanding the variables that were studying in the research.

The author clearly defined collective and global self-esteem which were important concepts and portions of the study and research questions. The author even reported that there was a lack of research on the relationship between collective self-esteem and drinking behavior. Since there is a lack of previous studies on the constructs that are being studied, the articles cited were enough and were peer-reviewed in nature. Methodology The research was exploratory in nature as it aimed to further explore the relationship between global self-esteem and collective self-esteem and how they helped in predicting drinking behavior.

The researchers hypothesized that the White American students were more indulged in drinking alcohol as compared to the Koreans and the Chinese students and global self-esteem had a positive relationship with drinking more in the White student population. The independent and dependent variables were measurable, specific and observable. The variable of self-esteem was measured through the scale of global and collective self-esteem scales and drinking was measured as the frequency of drinking per day.

The population under study was young adults belonging to the ethnicities of Korean, Chinese and White American. They were college students and their identities were protected by keeping their names anonymous. Data Collection and Data Analyses The data was collected through surveys that were anonymous in nature and these surveys included that Daily Drinking Questionnaire as well as Multi-group Ethnic Identity Measure that was a Likert scale questionnaire in which the respondents had to either agree or disagree with the statements in the questionnaire.

Global Self Esteem was recorded with the assistance of Rosenberg Self-esteem scale and Collective Self Esteem was used to identify the importance that different individuals placed on being a member of their ethnic group. The collected data was analyzed with the help of hierarchical regression in three different stages. Findings And Conclusions The researchers identified that white young adults were drinking more than their Korean and Chinese counterparts and there was a positive link between global self-esteem and drinking.

The researchers even identified that collective self-esteem was negatively related to drinking behavior especially among the Korean and the Chinese population. The limitation of the study was that the impact of gender on drinking behavior amongst the population was not studied. The study can become a starting point in conducting future research on the relationship between ethnicity and drinking behavior. The study can help social workers in dealing with the drinking issue experienced by different individuals belonging to different ethnicities. It helps in identifying the risk factors that are associated with alcohol abuse among different ethnicities.