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Alcohol consumption in Romania: between perception and reality

Alcohol consumption in Romania: between perception and reality

Autori:

Madalina HIDEG

Cod: ISSN: 2066-6861 (print), ISSN: 2067-5941 (electronic)
Dimensiuni: pp. 85-94

 

 

How to cite this article:

Hideg, M. (2018). Alcohol consumption in Romania: between perception and reality. Social Research Reports, 10(2), 85-94.

 

 

Abstract:

In a consumerist society as ours, everything is relative, even scientific data. When studying data from different sources but on the same topic, one may find apparently unexplainable differences. For example, if one looks on data regarding the alcohol consumption in Romania, they may not know what to believe: is alcohol consumption a problem of our society, as well, or it is merely bad statistics, without any influence on the real life. The aim of this study is to prove that one must be very careful when reading data, regardless the sources, and they must not take for granted only one piece of information. If one looks into official statistics such as the ones from The World Health Organization, they will find that Romania is on the 5th rank in the world regarding alcohol consumption. But if one looks into opinion polls, they may think that Romania is a very lucky country and there is no problem at all with the alcohol consumption. We’ll see that neither the statistics are accurate, due to the data aggregation methods that they use, nor the opinion polls reflect the whole truth because sometimes people lie when answering questions within opinion polls. This fact can be explained by looking deeper in the process of opinion formation, when people are influenced by the others from their community (and so we talk about social influence) or they are influenced at the very beginning when a message is being transmitted to them, especially through media means (and so we talk about mediology). Opinion polls data express rather majority and normative perceptions upon facts than a full range of realities.

Keywords:

alcohol addiction, social influence, mediology, alcohol consumption, communication.

 

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