FY 2000 Awardees: Grant Competition to Prevent High-Risk Drinking or Violent Behavior Among College Students

The U.S. Department of Education is pleased to announce the winners of this year's Grant Competition to Prevent High-Risk Drinking and Violent Behavior Among College Students. Twelve schools' grant applications were approved, and will receive sums ranging from $188,000 to $226,000 for a 27-month project and budget period. These colleges and universities have been funded to develop or enhance, implement, and evaluate campus-based alcohol, other drugs, and violence prevention strategies. Grantees will focus attention on and develop solutions to reduce high-risk drinking among college students (specifically student athletes, first-year students, or students attending two-year institutions) and/or prevent violent behavior by college students.

Florida State University
Changing Social Norms About High-Risk Drinking on the College Campus
Project Director: Michael P. Smith

In order to reduce high-risk drinking, Florida State University organized a community coalition in the Fall 1998 semester to affect changes in alcohol policy through media advocacy. Thus far, this model has proven effective in controlling the "bar scene"; however, it has had little impact on student attitudes. This project proposes to use the social norms approach to change student attitudes, specifically those of first-year students, about the acceptability of binge drinking. Assisting in this effort will be faculty members and students from the Schools of Communication and Business who will help develop messages and evaluate their impact.

George Mason University
Healthy Expectations: Promoting Substance-Free College Transitions
Project Director: David S. Anderson, Ph.D.

This proposed project emphasizes correcting misperceptions regarding alcohol use on the college campus, as well as promoting positive life health behaviors, among first-year students. This initiative builds upon two distinct approaches (social norms campaigns and life health planning), incorporates multiple modes of technology, and targets first-year students who typically have a documented greater involvement in high-risk drinking. The project’s aim is to improve the quality of life through corrected misperceptions and challenged expectations and skills in life health, thus resulting in lower alcohol use and a campus setting more conducive to academic pursuits and heightened retention.

Kent State University
A Multi-Campus Trial of Social Norming Approaches: Testing Universal and Targeted Interventions to Reducing High-Risk Drinking Among Student-Athletes
Project Director: Dennis Thombs, Ph.D.

This project will implement a social norms campaign at three separate campuses to reduce high-risk drinking among student-athletes. Kent State University, the University of Toledo, and the University of Akron have each agreed to collaborate on this project. Each institution will host a distinct component of the project, depending on the current stage of their implementation of the social norms model. A rigorous process and outcome evaluation will attempt to answer the following question: what is the optimal way to influence student-athletes using social norming?

Marshall University
Freshmen Changing Campus
Project Director: Carla Lapelle

This project proposes to work with students in the freshmen seminar to enhance their interpersonal, school, and community protective factors in order to bring about a reduction in high-risk drinking, and to change the campus environment toward one that is intolerant of high-risk drinking. The goal of this project is to move the campus toward one that offers abundant alcohol-free options, supports its students, expects positive contributions from first-year students, and expects a lower frequency of risk behaviors.

Morehouse School of Medicine
Atlanta University Center Alcohol Risk Management Coalition
Project Director: Charles C. Releford, Jr.

This project will focus on increasing support for campus and local policy change, increased law enforcement partnerships, education and training of retail establishments licensed to sell alcohol, and increasing the presence of public education and awareness messages and activities aimed at first-time freshmen. The development of strengthened partnerships with parents of students and a strong posture on the issue of the Family Educational Right to Privacy Act also will be emphasized.

Oglala Lakota College
Canku Luta: A Lakota Alcohol, Other Drug, and Violence Prevention Project for College Students
Project Director: Shirley Brewer

This project proposes to determine the prevalence of destructive and persistent high-risk drinking behaviors among first-year students by incorporating traditional Lakota values with social norm marketing practices that have been shown to be effective on other college campuses. The three goals of the project are to identify and assess student norms and myths related to high-risk drinking; develop and implement a Student Assistant Program emphasizing proactive social norms; and assess the effectiveness of the Student Assistant Program in decreasing detrimental behaviors in the student population.

University of California-San Diego
Campus Factoids, Men’s Workshops, and Social Norms Campaign: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Violence Prevention for Men
Project Director: Brian J. Murray, MD

The design of the proposed project is to try three different strategies and evaluate their individual effectiveness, as well as their combined effectiveness, in reducing men’s violence. The three strategies are to develop and implement a campus-wide social norms marketing campaign; develop and conduct men’s only workshops; and pilot the state-of-the-art Multimedia Campus Factoids electronic social norms software.

University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Enhancing a Norms Program to Reduce High-Risk Drinking Among First-Year Students
Project Director: Robert D. Foss, Ph.D.

This project proposes to enhance a carefully developed and targeted program to reduce high-risk drinking among first-year students. The program is designed to accomplish its goal by ensuring that students entering the university know, or quickly learn, that drinking among the university’s students is typically moderate and that a substantial number of underage students abstain from using alcohol. The program is designed to elevate awareness of the social norm concerning alcohol use and thereby to reduce incorrect perceptions about student drinking.

University of Rhode Island
Interactive Social Norms Correction for First-Year Students
Project Director: Daniel W. Reilly

The proposed project seeks to utilize a mandatory course for all incoming first-year students, known as URI 101, as a media outlet for social norms misperception corrections. The project will test a new form of social norms marketing in which data is collected during one class presentation and correct norm information is fed back to the students within the same class period. A second goal of the project is to acclimate campus stakeholders in the benefits of social norms approaches. More than 50 influential and active members of the faculty and staff serve as instructors in URI 101.

University of South Carolina
A Randomized Study of Social Norming Interventions to Reduce High-Risk Drinking Among First-Year Students at the University of South Carolina
Project Director: Jerry T. Brewer

The University of South Carolina has developed nationally recognized interventions and educational programs over the past decade, especially with regard to addressing the unique needs of first-year students. This includes a comprehensive proactive prevention plan to address alcohol use, other drug use, and related violence. The proposed study will experimentally evaluate two novel interventions designed to address currently unmet needs on their campus and will generate important practical and theoretical information pertinent to reducing high-risk drinking.

University of South Florida
An Alcohol Expectancy-Based Approach for Preventing High-Risk Alcohol Use Among Community College Students
Project Director: Jack Darkes, Ph.D.

This project proposes to test a combination of theoretically derived and empirically validated procedures for the reduction of alcohol use in potentially high-risk community college students. The proposed program, an expectancy education program, is a single session educational program based on teaching students about the discrepancies between their positive expectations for alcohol and its true chemical effects. It also includes elements to increase skills in recognizing stimuli associated with high-risk drinking and provide more accurate feedback on student misperceptions.

Washington State University
Project EMPOWERMENT: Positive Steps Toward a Healthy and Safe Campus Community
Project Director: Jeanne M. Far

The primary goal of this project is to correct misperceptions of alcohol and other drug use norms among first-year and athlete students at Washington State University. Through the delivery of small group norms challenging interventions for these target populations, it is expected that the project will realize several outcomes. These include a decrease in rates of students’ use of alcohol and other drugs; decrease in the overall quantity and frequency of binge drinking; changes in reported attitudes about the acceptability of alcohol and other drug use; increases in accurate perceptions of students alcohol and other drug use; and reduction in harmful health, social, and academic effects related to alcohol and other drug abuse, including violence.