Substance abuse decreases through student education
Sexy?
This was the word emblazoned across the tops of a USU advertising campaign aimed at helping students create more accurate perceptions about the number of students binge drinking and doing drugs.
The posters feature pictures that show the consequences of drinking and drug use and statistics about how many students participate in binge drinking or drug abuse.
Jamie McKinlay, program coordinator of the Wellness Center and creator of the ad campaigns, said, “We want to help students coming into college. If they come thinking that [binge drinking and drug use] is what’s normal and that it is what they’re supposed to do, then they are more likely to do that.”
McKinlay said the ad campaign is based off the idea that if students have an accurate perception of how much substance abuse is happening on their campus, then they will feel less peer pressure to engage in substance abuse.
The Wellness Center is paying for the campaigns through a three-year grant received from the U.S. Department of Education and is one of 300 colleges and universities nationwide that has received federal money to implement similar campaigns.
The approach is termed the “social norms approach” and McKinlay said it relies on the premise that students often overestimate the extent that their peers engage in risky behavior. If students realize that healthy behavior is common, this approach says they are more likely to have good habits also.
“The focus is on students’ overestimation,” McKinlay said. “We want to correct these misperceptions and by correcting them, the problem behavior actually decreases.”
Michael P. Haines, director of the National Social Norms Resource Center, said universities nationwide have seen the impact of social norm programs through declines in high-risk drinking and increases in healthy behavior.
McKinlay said, “Social norming is one of the only prevention programs that has consistently worked. It’s just like disciplining a child; if you focus on the positive, the positive will grow, but if you focus on the negative, the negative will l grow.”
“I want to see a decline in the negative associations with drinking, because most students at USU – about 93 percent – drink responsibly or not at all.”
USU has seen perception of use become more in alignment with actual use statistics, McKinlay said. She said the university conducts the surveys every two years and the next one will be in February.
McKinlay is currently working on the third year of advertising made possible by the grant money. She said even when the grant money is gone, the university will continue running the ads while changing the message every year.
The Wellness Center also runs the Healthy Campus program, which focuses on physical activity, nutrition, stress management and mental health.
“We have a great campus and a great healthy student body. I want that to continue,” McKinlay said.
The Wellness Center welcomes comments, questions or suggestions at www.usu.edu/swc/contact. To view the past two years of campaigns, go to www.usu.edu/swc/programs/social_norms.cfm.
–dilewis@cc.usu.edu