LateNight Penn State Alcohol-Free Programming: Students Drink Less on Days They Participate

Abstract

Despite the public health importance of alcohol-free social programs for college students, the majority of existing campus strategies have not been empirically evaluated. This study utilized repeated daily reports to examine the association between attendance at campus-led alcohol-free programming and alcohol use on specific days while controlling for individuals' typical rates of use. The current study assessed students' participation in the Late-Night Penn State (LNPS) alcohol-free programming and amount of alcohol use at a daily level, in order to determine whether students consumed less alcohol on days they attended LNPS compared to weekend days they did not attend. First-year college students reported their daily social activity involvement and alcohol use via 14 consecutive daily web-based surveys. Multilevel regression analyses modeled variation in alcohol use on weekend days (N=3,350) nested within people (N=689 people, 51% women). Analyses focused on within-individual differences between nights attending and not attending LNPS, thereby controlling for stable individual differences, measured and unmeasured. Results indicated that students drank less on days they attended LNPS and on days they stayed in (rather than going to bars/parties, other campus events, or entertainment), both especially among women. These results suggest that alcohol-free social programs may be an effective strategy for decreasing alcohol use on days when students attend alcohol-free events rather than going to other events or gatherings.

Leisure Activities, the Social Weekend, and Alcohol Use: Evidence From a Daily Study of First-Year College Students

“…The present study makes use of the fi rst wave of data from the University Life Study, a seven-semester longitudinal web-based study wherein a cohort of students enrolled at a large university completed a web-based questionnaire and a 14-day daily diary each semester (Patrick et al, 2010). The study was approved by the institutional review board and protected by a federal certifi cate of confi dentiality.…”

“…More drinks are consumed on Thursday nights when students do not have Friday classes or when their classes begin after noon on Fridays (Wood et al, 2007). Although researchers have started examining how college students' alcohol use varies in conjunction with the types of activities they participate in on a given day (Mohr et al, 2005;Patrick et al, 2010), there does not appear to be information on how activity/drinking associations may differ by the time of week. Better understanding of the timing of students' activity and drinking behavior and the timesensitive nature of links between those behaviors will assist the development of more effective efforts to reduce alcohol misuse among college students.…”

“…There is limited information about students' day-today duration of activity participation (Darling et al, 2005;Gardner et al, 2008;Hansen and Larson, 2007;Marsh and Kleitman, 2002). The present study addressed these limitations, using 2 weeks of daily reports obtained from a sample of fi rst-year college students (see also Patrick et al, 2010). First, we documented the duration of students' activity participation, the quantity of alcohol consumed, and heavy drinking, as well as how these behaviors differed by gender and the time of week (weekday vs. SWE).…”

“…Recently, Patrick et al (2010) demonstrated that fi rst-year college students consumed fewer drinks on weekend nights when they attended alcohol-free university-sponsored activities compared with weekend nights when they went out to bars, parties, sporting events, or other entertainment or campus events. Such fi ndings support recommendations of the NIAAA's (2009) College Drinking Prevention Task Force for reducing college drinking and changing campus drinking cultures-specifi cally, to develop alcohol-free activities/ events during prime social times (i.e., weekend late nights).…”

Pathways to Effectiveness in Substance Abuse Prevention: Empowering Organizational Characteristics of Community-Based Coalitions

“…Specific environmental strategies that have shown promise in reducing the consequences of alcohol use among young adult populations include, for example, the adoption of social host liability laws (Chaloupka, Grossman, & Saffer, 2002;Stout, Sloan, Liang, & Davies, 2000); enhanced identification checks by alcohol vendors; reduced illegal sales to minors through merchant training (Imm et al, 2007;Toomey et al, 2007); and the use of media campaigns to change to community norms that tolerate or foster underage drinking (DeJong & Langford, 2002;Imm et al, 2007; National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism [NIAAA], 2009;Patrick, Maggs, & Osgood, 2010;Toomey et al, 2007). Similar environmental strategies can be used to target consumption patterns and harmful consequences of other drugs (Dent, Grube, & Biglan, 2005;Freisthler, Kepple, Sims, & Martin, 2013;Friend & Levy, 2002, Holder, 2002, Krieger et al, 2013 and tobacco use (Bunnell et al, 2012).…”