Welcome on the "Youth@Night" project website, which studies the nightlife (regularly attended places and alcohol consumption) of young adults in Lausanne and Zurich.
On weekends, young adults consume alcohol in private settings, in closed spaces like bars or nightclubs, and also in public places (in front of nightclubs, in parks, or simply in the street). However, the knowledge on young adults' alcohol consumption habits in Switzerland, for example the places they go to and the types of drinks consumed, is weak. Apart from personal experience, the media is generally the main information source on young adults' behavior on nights out. Because the media tends to highlight stories of violence or other problems related to excessive alcohol consumption, the result is often a distorted image of reality. The goal of the Youth@Night project is to understand more clearly the way young adults use public and private space (comings and goings, gathering places, etc.) during weekend night outs and to analyze the influence of context (place, luminosity, loudness) on alcohol consumption throughout the evening.
The project is led by three research institutes (Addiction Suisse in Lausanne, Idiap in Martigny and the Institute of Human Geography at the University of Zurich). Thanks to these three institutes' expertise, the Youth@Night project will (1) develop a smartphone application which allows participants to report on their alcohol consumption and its context over an entire night out, in a non-intrusive way; (2) study the role of situational factors (e.g. luminosity, loudness, attendance) on alcohol consumption; and (3) study the role of urban structure (e.g. places of consumption, comings and goings) on consumption habits on an individual and collective level. The study will take place during autumn 2014 in Lausanne and Zurich (at least 100 participants per town).
The project is funded by the Swiss National Scientific Research Foundation's multidisciplinary studies program (Ref. CR12I1_150181/1).