‘Social norms’ programs curbs teen alcohol use
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An approach to reduce unsafe drinking and other harmful behaviors among college students may be similarly effective among high schoolers, according to research presented during the recent National Social Norms Conference, held in Denver, Colorado.
“The success social norms programs have had at reducing high-risk drinking and promoting healthy behaviors at the college level has been remarkable, and we’re seeing similar response for high-school settings,” Michael Haines, director of the National Social Norms Resource Center in DeKalb, Illinois, said in a statement.
The social norms approach is based on the idea that much of an individual’s behavior is influenced by his or her perception of what is normal among his or her social group. If that perception is incorrect, as is often the case, and an unhealthy behavior is perceived to be normal, more individuals may participate in that behavior to conform with their peers.
For example, Haines said, when college students are asked about alcohol drinking among their peers, they usually think that more drinking is going on than actually is.
“If the problem is overestimated, people are following imaginary peer pressure,” Haines said, explaining that this may lead more people to get drunk if they think everyone else is doing the same thing or cause some people to hide the fact that they are not getting drunk.
The social norms approach is a way in which experts “try to expose people to the truth in order to change their behavior for the better,” Haines said.
In his study, Haines and his team looked at how college students protect themselves from alcohol-related dangers, in light of research showing that although up to 80 percent of them drink regularly, few report damaging property, being involved in fights, or otherwise being involved in serious alcohol-related harm.
They found that nearly two-thirds of college students regularly engage in two or more “personal protective behaviors” to avoid experiencing alcohol-related harm, such as keeping track of how many drinks they have had, or avoiding drinking games, and almost three-quarters of students engage in at least one such protective behavior.
Many students protect themselves by engaging in “situational abstinence”; that is, nearly 7 out of every 10 students said they sometimes or usually did not drink alcohol while socializing, Haines and his colleagues report. Their study will be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of American College Health.
These findings suggest, Haines said, that if college administrators, residence hall directors and the like were to highlight the protective practices used commonly in college communities “we would get more of that behavior.”
It seems to work for at the high school level as well.
The “Now You Know!—Challenging Underage Drinking and Driving” social norms campaign, for example, is currently in its fourth year of use in a rural community in Colorado. During its first three years, the campaign promoted positive attitudes and practices to deter young people from unsafe drinking and driving behaviors. In one high school using the campaign, 30-day alcohol use dropped eight percentage points from 2003 to 2005, and impaired driving dropped five percentage points within the same period.
As a the result of another campaign, the ACTUALITY Project in Fort Collins, Colorado, the number of students who said they were not drinking and driving rose to 89 percent in 2005, up from 84 percent in 2003.
A third social norms project, started in 2004 at a Stevens Point, Wisconsin senior high school, has been successful in correcting misperceptions of student alcohol and other drug use. So far, the project has led to a 14 percent decrease in the expected rate of alcohol use among high school students, researchers report.
“The results achieved through these programs are extremely encouraging and are a testament to the validity of the (social norms) approach,” Haines said in a statement.
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