BARRINGTON — A survey of alcohol consumption among adults and high school students in town has concluded that parents drink more than the state average, but that Barrington youth drink far less often than their peers in Rhode Island.

The survey, conducted on the Internet in April and May, also found that one-third of the students acknowledged consuming alcohol at some point in their lives, yet the same students believed that alcohol use is twice as prevalent among their friends.

The perception that everybody else is drinking — even if they are not — is not restricted to students.

Seventy-seven percent of the parents said underage drinking should never be allowed. But they estimated that only 37 percent of other Barrington parents shared that view.

“It highlights some of the things we thought, that kids overestimate what their peers are doing,” said Kathleen Sullivan, coordinator of the town’s substance abuse task force.

The findings, released yesterday by Kristen Westmoreland, of Brown University’s department of community health, are based on a survey that ultimately included 10 percent of the Barrington High School population.

Of the 936 survey invitations that went out to parents, only 160 adults — 17 percent — completed the Web-based questionnaire. Only one parent per household was allowed to respond, and a parent needed to give permission for their students to go on the Web and answer the questions.

Permission was granted to 184 students, and 109 students completed the survey. As an incentive, students who responded were entered into a raffle to win gift certificates to Providence Place mall or Best Buy, or tickets to the Hall at Patriot Place, the New England Patriots’ hall of fame.

ment with the response rate, but said it should provide useful information for developing a fall campaign designed to show local teens that student drinking is far less common than they might think.

Westmoreland said she didn’t think the response rate was low. It was nearly identical to an educational survey conducted by the Rhode Island Department of Education.

“This is actually pretty encouraging,” she said. Because it was done anonymously on the Internet, “you didn’t have teachers standing over you, you didn’t have people seeing your answers. I think what we got is accurate.”

While there has been widespread angst in town over the issue of teenage drinking, especially in the wake of four deaths in recent years, the Westmoreland survey found that underage drinking may be less prevalent than people believe.

Only 15 percent of the students reported drinking any type of alcohol in the previous 30 days. That’s nearly three times lower than the rate in Rhode Island gleaned from a 2007 survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In contrast, 84 percent of Barrington parents said they had consumed at least one drink in the previous month, compared with 67 percent in another CDC survey, of Rhode Islanders age 45 to 54. Eighty-four percent of the adults who responded to the new survey were women.

When the teenagers were asked who drinks in town, they reported that lifetime alcohol use was twice as common among their friends than it was among them.

Thirty-five percent said they had consumed alcohol at some point in their lives, yet they estimated that the rate was 66 percent among their close friends.

The figures may be influenced by age; most of the students who responded were in the lower grades — 20 percent were seniors, 19 percent were juniors, 27 percent were sophomores and 34 percent were ninth graders.

Among the students, 72 percent reported being involved in sports and 68 percent said they were in some other extracurricular activity.

At least 98 percent of the parents said they would use the town’s police-tip line to report a suspected case of drunk driving. The rate was 84 percent among the teens.

Sullivan said a more detailed analysis of the results will be presented to the Town Council, probably in September.

gemery@projo.com