The authors evaluated the efficacy of a computer-delivered personalized normative feedback intervention in reducing alcohol consumption among heavy-drinking college students. Participants included 252 students who were randomly assigned to an intervention or control group following a baseline assessment. Immediately after completing measures of reasons for drinking, perceived norms, and drinking behavior, participants in the intervention condition were provided with computerized information detailing their own drinking behavior, their perceptions of typical student drinking, and actual typical student drinking. Results indicated that normative feedback was effective in changing perceived norms and alcohol consumption at 3-and 6-month follow-up assessments. In addition, the intervention was somewhat more effective at 3-month follow-up among participants who drank more for social reasons.

Objective-This research was designed to evaluate the relative contribution of social norms, demographics, drinking motives, and alcohol expectancies in predicting alcohol consumption and related problems among heavy-drinking college students.Method-Participants included 818 (57.6% women) first-year undergraduates who reported at least one heavy-drinking episode in the previous month. In addition to providing demographic information (gender and fraternity/sorority membership) participants completed Web-based assessments of social norms (perceived descriptive norms regarding typical student drinking, injunctive norms regarding friends' and parents' approval), motives (social, enhancement, coping, and conformity), and expectancies and evaluations of positive and negative alcohol effects.Results-Regression results indicated that descriptive and injunctive norms were among the best predictors of college student drinking. With respect to alcohol problems, results indicated that coping motives accounted for the largest proportion of unique variance. Finally, results revealed that alcohol consumption mediated the relationships between predictors and problems for social norms, whereas coping motives, negative expectancies, and evaluation of negative effects were directly associated with alcohol problems despite having relatively weak or null unique associations with consumption. Conclusions-The results of this study substantiate social norms as being among the best predictors of alcohol consumption in this population and suggest that drinking to cope is a better predictor of problems. The findings are discussed in terms of practical prevention and treatment implications.Heavy Alcohol Consumption is both a prevalent and a problematic behavior among college students. Approximately 40%-45% of students nationwide report engaging in heavy episodic drinking (e.g., O'Malley and Johnston, 2002;Wechsler and Kuo, 2000). Consequences of heavy drinking in this population are widespread and include criminal behavior, academic problems, unwanted sexual experiences, injuries, and death (Hingson et al., 2002(Hingson et al., , 2005Johnston et al., 2004;Wechsler et al., 1994). Previous research has identified a number of specific factors associated with heavy drinking, including demographic characteristics (gender and fraternity/sorority membership); descriptive and injunctive social norms; enhancement, social, coping, and conformity drinking motives; positive and negative alcohol expectancies; and subjective evaluations of positive and negative alcohol effects. Surprisingly little research has evaluated the relative contribution of different factors in predicting alcohol consumption and related problems. The present research was designed to begin to address this gap in the NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscriptliterature by evaluating the relative predictive utility of several factors that have been previously associated with heavy drinking among college students.Identifying the relative stren...

College students have been shown to consistently overestimate the drinking of their peers. As a result, social norms approaches are effective in correcting these misperceived norms to reduce alcohol consumption and alcohol-related problems. In this review of literature, the authors critically evaluated the effectiveness of personalized normative feedback. In addition, the authors reviewed personalized normative feedback interventions and provided suggestions for increasing the efficacy of these interventions by making better use of salient referent group data. Keywords alcohol; binge drinking; college students; social norms Alcohol consumption among college students has been an area of extensive concern, largely based on widespread problems associated with college student drinking. Heavy-episodic drinkers (women who consume 4 or more drinks per occasion and men who consume 5 or more drinks per occasion), who consume up to 68% of all alcohol that students report drinking, account for most of these alcohol-related problems. 1 As a result, heavy-episodic drinking is of particular concern because it is associated with more negative consequences compared with drinking in general. 2We conducted a thorough literature search on social norms approaches by using PsycINFO (http://www.apa.org/psycinfo/), a psychology database collection. We included all published peer-reviewed articles that addressed personalized normative feedback approaches in college populations. In this review, we critically evaluated the effectiveness of personalized normative feedback in reducing alcohol consumption and alcohol-related problems among college students. Although social marketing approaches are often used, the focus of our review was personalized normative feedback. We also provide suggestions on how personalized normative feedback interventions can be made more effective. SOCIAL NORMS INTERVENTIONSOne theory regarding the widespread use of alcohol among college students involves misperceptions of peer drinking norms. For the purposes of this review, we focused primarily on descriptive drinking norms. 3 Descriptive norms describe actual behavior rather than beliefs

In response to the persistent problem of college drinking, universities have instituted a range of alcohol intervention programs for students. Motivational feedback is one intervention that has garnered support in the literature and been adopted on college campuses. This article reviews published outcome studies that have utilized feedback as a major component of an alcohol intervention for college students. Overall, 11 of the 13 reviewed studies (77%) found a significant reduction in drinking as compared to a control or comparison group. While the studies varied widely in terms of population, follow-up period, and feedback content, it appears that feedback can be effective whether delivered by mail, the Internet, or via a face-to-face motivational interview. Feedback seems to change normative perceptions of drinking and may be more effective among students who drink for social reasons. The addition of a group or individual counseling session does not appear to increase the short-term impact of the feedback.

This study evaluated perceptions of same-sex and opposite-sex gender-specific versus gendernonspecific drinking norms among college students (115 men, 111 women). This research is consistent with previous findings that college students overestimate the quantity and frequency of drinking among their gender-nonspecific peers and demonstrates that both men and women overestimate the quantity and frequency of the drinking of their same-sex peers. The findings suggest that perceived same-sex norms are more strongly associated with problematic drinking than are gender-nonspecific norms and that perceived same-sex drinking norms are stronger predictors of alcohol consumption for women than for men. Results suggest that interventions incorporating normative feedback should be framed differently for women than for men.