Gator Stompin', the traditional end-of-semester pub crawl, may not be the drunken fest students would imagine.
The Nov. 29 stompers were actually less intoxicated than nonparticipating bar patrons that night, according to UF researchers.
Virginia Dodd, assistant professor in the department of health education and behavior and principal investigator for the study, found the results surprising.
Dodd expected that people participating would be more intoxicated than those who weren't, but the study proved otherwise.
"If your goal is to go out and just get wasted, then Gator Stompin's not a good deal," Dodd said.
Ten researchers set up a table on a street corner in downtown Gainesville the night of the event. Between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m., they asked passing bar patrons to complete a short survey on their drinking that evening and performed breathalyzer tests to measure breath alcohol concentration.
While stompers had consumed more drinks, on average 6.7 compared to 3.9, they were actually less intoxicated, said Ryan O'Mara, a co-investigator for the study.
The average breath alcohol concentration of a participant was 0.067, significantly lower than the 0.089 average breath alcohol concentration of a nonparticipant, O'Mara said.
"It is preliminary, but at the same time, when you find significant differences, it suggests that there was something real in the population that we looked at," O'Mara said. "That these differences were real."
Dodd offered several explanations as to why participants could consume more drinks but be less intoxicated.
Event participants received smaller drinks than those a bar patron could buy, and some sites also offered food instead of drinks. The distance between sites was also a possibility because it forced participants to travel to receive their next drink, she said.
Dodd said most students are open to the research.
"We've only had a couple that claim we're working for President Machen, and it's a conspiracy, and we're trying to take alcohol away from the world," she said.
