But a two and a half year long study at Indiana University has shown some notable results involving ways to change drinking culture among undergrads.
The study, which took place from 2006-2009, involved a quasi-experimental format that compared freshmen who lived on campus with non-freshmen who lived off-campus.
The students who lived off-campus were only exposed to environmental interventions, which involved posters and other information that promoted several different anti-binge drinking and responsible drinking and driving campaigns.
However, the students who lived on-campus were exposed to interventions at the individual level, via a required online class; at peer level via resident assistants who had received special training; as well as the environmental interventions.
The results were promising.
Campus-dwelling freshmen showed significant drops in the average number of drinks they had per week, plus the percentage of students who drank at least once a week in the last year along with the proportion of students who engaged in binge drinking in the previous week also dropped.
Some of the findings included:
- The average number of drinks consumed in a week declined by 15.9 percent for the freshmen but only 7.5 percent for the comparison group
- The percentage of students who drank at least once a week declined by 17.5 percent for the freshmen compared to 6.7 percent for the comparison group
- The percentage of students binge drinking declined by 12.2 percent among freshmen and by 1 percent for the comparison group.
"An ecologically guided, multi-tiered approach appears to be critical for success," said Dong-Chul Seo, associate professor in the Department of Applied Health Science at IU's School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation.
Seo cited the Task Force of the National Advisory Council on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism's 2002 recommendation of the multi-tiered approach, which was widely advocated by college administrators and researchers, but "there is still a paucity of data on the effectiveness of such interventions."
Despite the positive outcome from the study, Seo says there were also some troubling results. Namely, students' attitudes about drinking.
While the comparison group's attitudes changed about drinking -- after the study, they were less likely to feel drinking makes it easier to deal with stress and bond with friends -- the on-campus students' perceptions about drinking stayed positive. They still felt drinking helped them bond with friends and have more fun.
"This might be interpreted that the perceived benefits of drinking might not affect drinking behavior as much as one could expect. That is, drinking may not necessarily happen because one sees the direct benefit of drinking, given the substantial improvements in drinking behavior as well as in drinking norms and consequences
observed in this study," said Seo, adding that these changes were unexpected and need further research.
