Topic: Why are you asking so much about my friends?

Topic: Why are you asking so much about my friends?

Since the primary goal of ’21 Rising is to understand the impact of social networks, it is necessary to know where friend groups are in the network and basic information about the relationships and people within them. We are interested in basic characteristics about your friends because that helps us answer the research questions about the impact of social networks on behavior. The list of students in the Class of 2021 is provided for you to identify your friends so we can be certain we know which person you are choosing. From this information we can create diagrams of networks of people within the Class; names are not used when creating these diagrams. In fact, names shown to you in the survey are stored as an identification number. Since ’21 Rising is interested in alcohol use, we ask about your friends’ drinking. We understand that you may be uncomfortable reporting on your friends’ behavior, but we are not judging you or your friends. We are simply interested in the behavior of your friends so that we may better understand how this impacts you and others in the network.