10.47 Gambling and alcohol use by first-year college students. Gambling and alcohol use are problematic behaviors for many college students. One study looked at 908 first-year students from a large northeastern university.20 Each participant was asked to fill out the 10-item Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) and a seven-item inventory used in prior gambling research among college students. AUDIT assesses alcohol consumption and other alcohol-related risks and problems (a higher score means more risks). A correlation of 0.29 was reported between the frequency of gambling and the AUDIT score.

  1. (a) What percent of the variability in AUDIT score is explained by frequency of gambling?

  2. (b) Test the null hypothesis that the correlation between the gambling frequency and the AUDIT score is zero.

  3. (c) The sample in this study represents 45% of the students contacted for the online study. To what extent do you think these results apply to all first-year students at this university? To what extent do you think these results apply to all first-year students? Give reasons for your answers.