An Innovative Health Intervention to Reduce High-Risk Drinking Behavior On a College Campus

Background: During the past decades, little progress was made in curbing the high-risk drinking problem among colleges and universities across the country.  A recent Harvard University study noted that 81% of colleges considered alcohol use a problem and 66% labeled alcohol use as a major problem at their school. The 2002 NIAAA report cites college students’ high-risk drinking behavior as a severe public health threat to both the student population and residents in the surrounding communities. Within many university environments, including the University of Connecticut, high-risk drinking behavior is especially prevalent in off-campus environments. In an effort to address this issue, formative research was collected to design an innovative campaign directed at curbing high-risk alcohol use among college students. 

Program background: This project has two main objectives: 1) to advance science by implementing a student-driven campaign to help reduce irresponsible party hosting behavior and underage drinking; and 2) generate and implement a community-based alcohol-policy enforcement strategy to improve enforcement effectiveness.

Evaluation Methods and Results:  Methods: This project utilized focus groups (N = 30) to gather formative research data. The research findings helped inform the construction, development and implementation of the campaign.  Results: Latent content analysis (Glaser & Straus, 1967) was used to identify key themes related to throwing campus parties, smart party strategies and how to distribute information about effective party hosting skills to other students. First, students noted that the most common methods of informing partygoers about upcoming events were announcing parties to others through “social media channels” (N= 18, 60%), “word of mouth” (N= 12, 40%) and “text messaging” (N= 4, 13.3%). Common disadvantages associated with party hosting were “property damage” (N= 10, 33.3%), “altercations among party goers” (N=21, 70%), “police intervention” (N= 16, 53.3%) and “stolen property” (N= 5, 16.7%).  The most useful strategies identified by students to minimize these issues were “having a list of attendees/try to know who is attending” (N=8, 26.7%), “maintaining positive relationships with partygoers” (N= 3, 10%), and “knowing one’s legal rights as a tenant and a person” (N= 5, 16.7%). According to the respondents, a campaign that reminded students to “limit the number of guests,” (N= 5, 16.7%) “protect their valuables” (N= 6, 20%), and “limit advance notification time” (N= 6, 20%) to ensure that too many students do not show up to their party, would be most effective in curbing issues associated with high-risk behavior. Finally, students mentioned that the best way to distribute information about smart-party strategies in a campaign would be to give away “paraphernalia” (N = 23, 76.7%), “hold contests with prizes” (N = 9, 30), “host events” (N = 15, 50%) and create “games” that convey campaign messages (N = 9, 30%). 

Conclusions: These formative research findings helped inform the construction of evaluation measures as well as the tailored prevention program, which were implemented in a naturalistic experiment. 

Implications for research and/or practice: The information generated from these focus groups will provide health communication specialists with cutting-edge campaign techniques used to curb binge drinking. Additionally, campaign developers will be able to consider this information when creating future campaigns.