The National Institutes of Health will be spending close to $3 million to investigate ravers who frequent EDM clubs in order to try and reduce “unsafe” and “high risk” behaviors including “excessive alcohol use, drug use, physical and/or sexual aggression, and unsafe behaviors upon exiting from clubs.” The project will be led by the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, a Maryland-based nonprofit organization.
Since 2014, the project has received close to $2.9 million dollars and most recently received another $180,000 this past May that would carry the project into May 2019.
Per the project’s grant, the project mission statement “targets young, working adults who frequent clubs that feature Electronic Music Dance Events (EMDE) and engage in high risk behaviors” and will test a group-based intervention in order curb such behavior mentioned above. In addition, the study hopes to be able to assess a group of clubgoers’ risk level while providing groups that frequent clubs together “tools to protect their members.” Such solutions include a smartphone app that would serve as an “interactive intervention,” for example.
The study has already come up with several results that were published in 2016 including the observations that “groups that had higher levels of planned intoxication decreased risks of experiencing aggression, while a discrepancy in these intentions among group members increased the risks.”
Check out the full 2016 study here for more details as well if you’re interested.
H/T: Free Beacon
