Nightclubs have become more threatening and disorderly in the past decade and are now characterised by aggression, drunkenness and sexual jealousy, according to an academic study.

The report also claims that the genre of music played in clubs can impact on levels of disorder, while venues with high levels of singletons "on the prowl" were more prone to rows.

Unlike pubs, there are markedly more females than males now populating Scotland's nightclubs.

The £47,000 study, funded by the London-based Alcohol Education Research Council, compared eight nightclubs in Glasgow, which it used as a representative sample for the whole of the UK, and took into account customers' behaviour, age profile, music, ambience, decor, drinks' costs and the smoking ban.

A team of four researchers spent six months observing behaviour at eight mainstream clubs, as well as interviewing patrons.

Glasgow-based academic Dr Alasdair Forsyth, author of the report, carried out a similar investigation across 1993/94 and an examination of disorder in pubs in Glasgow three years ago.

The senior research fellow at Glasgow Caledonian University states that his first impression was "how radically the nightclub scene had changed".

He claims that in his 1990s study, which looked at the "rave" scene, there was an absence of "pulling", moderate alcohol consumption and a non-violent ethos.

But 12 years on this had been replaced by a culture of binge drinking and the move away from the "dance drug" culture in nightclubs has presented venue management with new challenges for managing disorder and substance use harm.

The one club that still catered for aficionados of the rave culture was found to have the lowest levels of disorder.

Clubs with a higher percentage of females recorded more trouble, a finding at odds with other international research, while under-age aggression is much more common but less serious than "grown-up violence". But despite Dr Forsyth's claims that nightclubs were more threatening, he believed his sample city was a model for good practice in the trade and that there were approaches which other towns and cities could adopt.

He said: "It wasn't just drugs and the ecstacy culture in the 1990s.

"There are as many drugs now but back then being a lager lout was taboo. In a strange way it's as if we've come full circle."

Donald McLeod has been a club owner and promoter in Glasgow for the best part of two decades.

Mr McLeod, whose portfolio of venues includes The Tunnel, the Garage and Cube, said: "There's no comparison with the Glasgow of the early 1990s.

"Things were so bad then we even had a curfew."