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

Of the questions, 11 concerned specific facts about alcohol use at the University of Mississippi that were featured in the Just the Facts campaign. Of these, 5 questions were selected for this analysis as appropriate indicators of perceived drinking norms. Other questions were not analyzed because of ambiguous wording or lack of direct relevance to student alcohol use. Students were asked to answer "true," "false," or "not sure" to the following statements, all of which are true:

1. Students with an A grade average drink less than 3 drinks per week.

2. Over half of college students drink less than once per week.

3. More than 75% of students have not used alcohol 3 or more times this week.

4. Almost 2/3 (67%) of college students report that they have never missed class due to alcohol use.

5. Over half of college students do not binge drink.

The last item was the primary indicator of perceived drinking norms at Ole Miss, with responses categorized as true versus false/not sure. However, the survey instructions are unclear whether students were being asked specifically about norms at Ole Miss students or about norms of college students in general.

For continuous variables, two-sample independent t tests were used to compare means between the pretest and each of the two posttest surveys. Chi-square analyses were used to compare categorical responses across surveys. Linear regression was used to determine predictors of drinks per week, while logistic regression was used to determine predictors of high-risk drinking behavior and perceptions of student drinking norms.

RESULTS

Demographics

Table 1 presents demographic data for the survey respondents for each of the three surveys. Men made up less than half of the survey participants, with a range from 47.6% for the pretest to 43.1% for the second posttest; a comparison of these two extremes was not statistically significant ([Chi-square] = 2.84, df = 1, p [is greater than] .05). For each survey, about nine-tenths of the surveyed students were white. The mean age of students increased slightly from survey to survey, as would be expected with the passage of time.

Table 1. Demographics of Participants by Survey Administration

                     Pretest     Posttest 1    Posttest 2
                    (n = 785)    (n = 697)     (n = 583)

Male (%)              47.6          46.3         43.1
Female (%)            52.4          53.7         56.9
White (%)             88.6          90.4         90.5
Nonwhite(a) (%)       11.4           9.6          9.5
Mean age (years)      18.21         18.35        18.72

Note: The JTF Survey was administered in September 1994 (pretest),
November 1994 (Posttest 1), and April 1995 (Posttest 2).

(a) "Non-white" refers to any participants who did not indicate that
they are white. Other response categories included "African-American,"
"Latino-Chicano," "Asian," and "Other, Specify."

Alcohol Use

Table 2 reports four measures of alcohol use. The percentage of students who reported drinking any alcohol increased slightly across the three surveys, from 79.9% at the pretest to 82.5% at the second posttest, although this difference was not statistically significant ([Chi-square] = 1.39, df = 1, p [is greater than] .05).