How MSU helped reduce high-risk drinking among students

<p>A university-wide social norms marketing campaign has reduced high-risk drinking and adverse outcomes of drinking, according to a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/NNJZPUZZXED7GP2WGA5B/full?target=10.1080%2F07448481.2019.1674856&amp;">new study</a> from Michigan State University in the Journal of American College Health.</p><p>MSU's social norms campaign was created to educate MSU students about actual drinking behavior on campus. When misperceptions are corrected, behavior will change to be more consistent with the actual norm says Dennis Martell, director of MSU Health Promotion.</p><p>“The social norms marketing approach assumes that most people conform to the perceived standards of the social groups to which they belong but, in actuality, what’s perceived is often not reality,” he says. “MSU has almost 20 years of evidence that shows that high-risk drinking and perceptions about drinking have changed on campus. The general misperception is that college-aged students party a lot and make questionable decisions, but the reality is that most students who choose to drink do so responsibly.”</p><p>Martell and his co-authors analyzed survey data collected every two years since 2000 and found that perceived drinking norms declined along with measures of actual drinking intensity and frequency. For example, the percentage of students who drank eight or more drinks declined from 27.8% in 2000 to 16.5% in 2014 – a 41% decline.</p><p>“The results are remarkable because students are continually bombarded with messages that encourage drinking,” says Larry Hembroff, director of research and evaluation for the <a href="https://socialnorms.org/">National Social Norms Center</a> at MSU and lead author. “Our campaign consists of materials posted around campus with facts that counter the myths of student drinking; the messages are simple, but they’ve worked.”</p><p>One surprising finding is how powerful the messages about using various protective behavior strategies while drinking have been at reducing neg