August 11, 2008

U. of Virginia Study Touts Success of Social-Norms Marketing in Cutting Drinking

Exposing students at the University of Virginia to accurate information about campus drinking habits significantly reduced the negative consequences of alcohol consumption, according to a study just published in the Journal of American College Health.

In 1999 Virginia started a “social norms” marketing campaign to inform freshmen that, based on campus surveys, students drink less than their peers perceive that they do. The university used newspaper advertisements, posters, and Web pages to deliver messages about drinking norms.

Social-norms marketing as a viable technique to reduce drinking has been sharply controversial, with some studies supporting the concept and others debunking it.

According to a description of the new study, the campaign reduced the number of students injured in alcohol-related incidents; those who drove after drinking; and those who had unprotected sex. Furthermore, there was a sharp increase in the number of students who reported experiencing none of 10 alcohol-related consequences.

The authors of a report on the study were James Turner, executive director of student health at Virginia; Jennifer Bauerle, director of the National Social Norms Institute, at Virginia; and H. Wesley Perkins, a sociology professor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. —Eric Hoover

Comments

1. Having seen these folks speak at a meeting earlier in the year, it’s important to note that this story fails to mention the environmental management strategies they also pursued during this time.

   And from their website: The National Social Norms Institute is made possible through a generous gift from the Anheuser Busch companies and its charitable foundation.

   I’m always a bit skeptical of projects so heavily funded by an industry, yet supposedly designed to reduce purchase of their product…but maybe that’s just me.

   — Anonymous    Aug 12, 12:17 PM    #

2. I think Anonymous is wise to be a little bit skeptical. With all due respect to the study’s authors, and The University of Virginia, this is hardly an impartial assessment. The livelihood of not only a number of professionals and but a whole arm of an administrative unit at UVa depend on positive outcomes. UVa has put an awful lot of eggs in the “social norms” basket since 1999. A finding that social norming DOESN’T work would be embarrassing, disruptive, financially scandalous, and just plain unacceptable to most of the people involved.

   It would be kinda like asking a group of Freudian scholars to investigate the efficacy of psychotherapy, or charging the Community Service office with determining whether volunteer work is a good idea. There’s too much personal and professional investment in a positive answer to discover anything else, no matter how ethical or objective they try to be.

   Maybe not, but… it’s a whole lot easier to believe some of the negative results on social norming that came from people who would benefit financially from it turning out the other way.

   — HIED doc    Aug 12, 03:35 PM    #

3. Social norms and social marketing research has been conducted at literally dozens of colleges and universities, so it would be wise to not focus a critique on UVa and the administrative structures there too sharply. Many other schools have reported reductions in high risk drinking rates and in the negative second-hand effects of high risk drinking after implementing such strategies. So, truly, it’s not just a matter of a bunch of suits at UVa trying to prove their worth.

   For at least the last eight years, most researchers and most of the major grant programs on this topic have been encouraging comprehensive approaches to college student alcohol misuse/abuse, so not just social norming, but also environmental strategies, BASICS interventions, etc.

   Involving parents in workshops, sponsoring concerts, etc. would seem to fall under the environmental interventions umbrella to me, but the researchers have decided to focus on the fact that no new policies were implemented during the time of thier study as proof that the marketing worked wonders here.

   By claiming, loudly, “It’s the marketing! It’s the norms marketing!”, the results here might actually set other schools up for trouble: they’ve got to do all the other stuff, too, not just the norms campaign, to get the results they want.

   — NYCEdPhD    Aug 13, 10:56 PM    #

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