Evaluation Of A Social Norms Marketing Campaign To Reduce High-Risk Drinking At The University Of Mississippi - .Statistical Data Included - )

American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, May, 2001 by Laura Gomberg, Shari Kessel Schneider, William DeJong

To reach students before the weekend, a time of especially heavy alcohol consumption, the JTF advertisements appeared in each Thursday's issue of the newspaper during both phases of the campaign. The advertisements presented several statistical facts about the University of Mississippi, including some related to current levels of student alcohol use. For example, one advertisement used the following fact: "About 8000 Ole Miss students have not used alcohol 3 or more times this week." Another advertisement stated, "60% of the students at Ole Miss use alcohol once a week or less."

Student members of the Golden Key chapter posted flyers that announced the Just the Facts campaign and encouraged students to look for the newspaper advertisements. In addition, the campus radio station was provided with "live copy" public service announcements (PSAs) to read on the air. During the campaign, Golden Key also ran a contest in which students who accurately reported statements of fact from the campaign were entered in a drawing for cash prizes. The contest feature was added to increase awareness of the campaign and to encourage attention to the messages conveyed in the newspaper advertisements.

METHODS

During the 1995-1996 school year, Golden Key's national office administered a written survey three times to all students enrolled in randomly selected required freshman English courses. The pretest was administered in September 1995. The first posttest, using the same set of selected class sections, was in November 1995, just after the end of the first 8-week campaign phase. The second posttest, using a new set of randomly selected class sections (due to the change in semester), was in April 1996, just after the end of the second 8-week campaign phase.

While the English classes were required for freshmen, several nonfreshmen also attended those classes and completed the survey. All nonfreshmen and students with missing data about class year were eliminated from the data analysis. The numbers of freshman students completing the surveys were 785 for the pretest, 698 for the first posttest, and 583 for the second posttest. Response rates are unknown.

The self-administered survey consisted of 42 questions to assess demographics, alcohol use, various attitudes toward alcohol and its associated effects, and exposure to the campaign and other alcohol advertising. Exposure to the JTF campaign was measured by whether students recognized the JTF logo ("yes" versus "no" / "not sure").

Three survey questions measured student alcohol use. Students were first asked, "Do you drink alcohol?" If they answered yes, they were asked two additional questions: "If yes, how many drinks do you normally have per week?" and "How many days do you normally drink per week?" For each of the last two questions, a blank space was provided for students to write in the appropriate number.

The survey did not measure high-risk drinking specifically. Instead, for each student, the number of drinks consumed per week was divided by the number of days per week on which alcohol was consumed, yielding the mean number of drinks per day that each student consumed when drinking alcohol. Females who drank a mean of 4 or more drinks per day and males who drank a mean of 5 or more drinks per day were classified as "high-risk drinkers."