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 Education Development Center, Inc., Awarded 5-Year Grant to Study Media Campaigns for Preventing Collegiate Alcohol Abuse FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 27, 2000 Contact:
Newton, Mass: Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC), has been awarded a five-year, $4 million grant by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the U.S. Department of Education to conduct the Social Norms Marketing Research Project. This study will evaluate a media campaign designed to decrease high-risk alcohol consumption among college students. EDC will work in partnership with the Golden Key International Honor Society, located in Atlanta, Georgia, to implement and evaluate Just the Facts, a media campaign developed and pilot-tested by campus-based chapters of Golden Key. The basic idea of social norms media campaigns is based on research showing that college students think much more drinking occurs among their peers than is actually the case. As students attempt to fit in and be accepted, they drink in excess, to the drinking levels they believe their peers are reaching. The purpose of the media campaign is to correct students’ perceptions of how much their peers drink in order to produce decreases in their own alcohol consumption. "Our partnership with Golden Key gives us the opportunity to put this promising strategy to the ultimate test," said William DeJong, principal investigator for the new project. "Several schools have seen drops in high-risk drinking that coincided with the implementation of a social norms campaign, but only a scientifically rigorous experiment can let us know for sure whether this kind of campaign can make a difference." Campuses have used a variety of media to convey social norms messages. For example, flyers, newspaper ads, press releases, and posters at Northern Illinois University stated, "Most NIU students (55 %) drink five or fewer drinks when they party." This helped to correct NIU student perceptions of how much their peers drank. Additionally, NIU witnessed a 35 percent reduction in student high-risk drinking after the campaign began. This type of prevention program has been pilot tested on several campuses but has never been subject to rigorous evaluation. Project director Laura Gomberg states, "We’ve had tremendous response from colleges that are very excited about participating in this landmark study. We intend to enlist a diverse set of schools to participate and then randomly assign them either to receive the Just the Facts media campaign or not." EDC and Golden Key staff will recruit 32 schools to participate in the study. They will conduct annual surveys of 10,000 college students, develop and evaluate a media campaign, and conduct the data analysis. This study will establish whether such campaigns correct students’ perceptions of their peers’ drinking behavior, and then whether those corrected perceptions lead to reduced rates of high-risk drinking. With 250 projects around the globe, EDC is one of the world's leading nonprofit education organizations. It conducts research and develops programs in such areas as early childhood development, K-12 education, health promotion, workforce preparation, learning technologies, and institutional reform. EDC specializes in creating and implementing training programs for teachers, health care professionals, and other workers; designing curriculum materials dedicated to inquiry-based, hands-on learning; and conducting applied research on learning through the life span and in a wide variety of settings. ### |