A LITTLE TASTE OF THE RESEARCH, SEE WHAT IT TASTES LIKE.

The first research component to Hello Sunday Morning is now complete! Wooop! Thank you to all those who volunteered their time in this process, the feedback has been incredible.

We have now presented the results of our findings in Canberra last week and in Bundaberg yesterday to very receptive crowds. A big thank you to McDonalds for letting us use your playground area in both cities 😉

As a quick recap, the 12 month Hello Sunday Morning project has got two specific objectives:

1)    Identify why young people choose to drink to excess

2)    Identify strategies and solutions that will change young people’s perceptions around those choices

For those that are interested, I thought I would post the backbone of our findings that will form the foundations of the report to come out next month.

The research to date has been focused on the first section of Hello Sunday Morning, to identify the psychological motivators behind dysfunctional drinking behaviour (and by extension, identify what a young person needs to get right to avoid these behaviours).

From our research, we have identified that there are three key things that a young person needs to get right to avoid excessive dysfunctional drinking behaviour. They are:-

–       A strong sense of identity (embodied through drinking to fit in and the effects of advertising)

–       The ability to create and engage in solid relationships (embodied through drinking as a social lubricant and an enabler)

–       A sense of purpose, direction and opportunity (embodied through drinking for boredom and no alternatives)

This is very much a rough outline sketch of our findings and in the next series of posts I will go deeper into each of these key facets of an individual’s life and how their deficiency in one or more translates in the propensity to drink to excess.

Finally, the next stage of Hello Sunday Morning will take the team on a journey to scour the world, maybe even the universe, and find the best resources and communication out there that has the potential to empower young Australians in these three specific areas.

I’m a little bit excited by the possibilities!