Study Casts Doubt on Popular Strategy to Curb Campus Drinking

An approach used increasingly in recent years by American colleges and universities to curb student alcohol abuse is not effective, according to a study released Wednesday by Harvard University’s School of Public Health.

The report found that two measures of student drinking -- monthly alcohol use and total volume of alcohol consumed -- actually rose on campuses where the strategy, known as “social norms marketing,” was in effect.

“We found no evidence that it works,” said Henry Wechsler, the study’s principal investigator. “On seven measures, we found no decrease in student drinking at the schools that use social norms, and on two of the measures, we found an increase.”

The report, part of the Harvard school’s long-running College Alcohol Study, casts a shadow on an increasingly common program. Many institutions, including several California State University campuses, have adopted social norms techniques as part of a comprehensive strategy to curb drinking.

The programs seek to reduce campus binge drinking by using posters, fliers and other promotions to inform students that their peers drink less than stereotypes would suggest. The idea is that students will drink less if they know that most peers are not drinking to excess.

Nearly half of all four-year colleges and universities in the nation employ some version of the social norms marketing approach, the study’s authors estimated. Alcohol manufacturers and government agencies have spent more than $8 million subsidizing such campaigns since the mid-1990s, the study found.

Proponents of the efforts took issue with the findings.

H. Wesley Perkins, a professor of sociology at New York’s Hobart and William Smith Colleges who is credited with launching the social norms movement, said case studies conducted on a variety of campuses have shown the campaigns to be effective. He said they have reduced problem drinking by as much as 20% in some cases.

“We’re still encouraged by the growing number of [studies] identifying social norms as the most effective strategy in reducing alcohol abuse” on college campuses, said Michael Haines, director of the National Social Norms Resource Center at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb.

Wechsler said the studies cited by Perkins are focused more on student perceptions than on scientific data on actual drinking patterns.

He also defended his study’s validity and methodology, noting that it is being published in the July issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol, a peer-reviewed publication of the Center of Alcohol Studies at Rutgers University.

The study tracked drinking patterns, as reported by students, on 98 college campuses, 37 of which have had social norms programs for at least one year. The rest did not use such programs. It measured for alcohol use seven different ways, such as having 20 or more drinks in the last month and being drunk at least three times in the last month.

Wechsler found that drinking patterns did not improve on campuses that had adopted social norms techniques.

He believes the increases shown on two of the measures indicate that the social norms approach may actually normalize drinking for students who don’t drink much. “Even if the message is that the average student drinks no more than a certain amount, the consistent center of the message is still that the average student drinks,” he said.

In the Cal State system, which adopted a systemwide student alcohol policy two years ago, several campuses have started social norms campaigns.

“Peer educators say it’s a message that seems to resonate with other students,” spokeswoman Colleen Bentley-Adler said. “But it’s one aspect of what we do, not the whole program.”