Social norms interventions to reduce alcohol misuse in University or College students

Moreira, Maria Teresa; Smith, Lauren A.; Foxcroft, David

doi:10.1002/14651858.cd006748.pub2

Cited by 217 publications

(170 citation statements)

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“…Social norms interventions have had mixed efficacy, and most involve telling recipients how they compared to the average person (Moreira et al, 2009). Our condition that adopted this approach, not unusually, was as ineffective as simply providing people with recommendations about behavior.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…Also, participants were exclusively from a university population. However, the high prevalence of excessive drinking amongst university students (Moreira et al, 2009) makes this population appropriate to recruit for alcohol intervention studies. Although all participants reported having received the intervention emails, no proof of how many emails were opened was attained.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Excessive drinkers typically underestimate their consumption relative to that of others, and social norm message interventions aim to reduce consumption by correcting these misperceptions by telling people how their drinking actually compares to that of others. These are used both as single, lowintensity interventions and as part of wider intervention packages (Moreira et al, 2009;Walters & Neighbors, 2005). Framing of relative drinking involves: (a) Telling people how much they drink relative to the average person (e.g., you drink 10 units and the average person drinks 5 units; Moreira et al, 2009); (b) telling people how their drinking ranks amongst others (e.g., you are in the top 10% of drinkers; Chan et al, 2007;Dimeff et al, 1999); or both (a) and (b) (Neighbors et al, 2004).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Improving social norms interventions: Rank-framing increases excessive alcohol drinkers’ information-seeking.

Taylor¹,

Vlaev²,

Maltby³

et al. 2015

Health Psychology

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Objective: Two types of social norm message frame for encouraging seeking of alcoholrelated health information by excessive drinkers were compared: (a) how much the average person actually drinks, and (b) how their drinking ranks amongst others. It was hypothesized, in accordance with recent evidence of how the brain represents value, that frame (b) would be more effective than frame (a). This is the first test comparing these frames in any domain of social norms research.Methods: United Kingdom university students with excessive alcohol intake (n = 101, 66 female) were sent four weekly messages containing one of four types of information depending upon the experimental condition to which each participant was randomly allocated: (1) Official alcohol consumption guidelines; (2) how their alcohol consumption compared to official guidelines; (3) how their consumption compared to the sample mean; or (4) how their consumption ranked amongst the sample. They then had the opportunity to request up to 3 types of alcohol-related health information.Results: Participants informed of how their consumption ranked were more likely to request information (p < .01, OR = 6.0) and tended to request a greater number of types of information (p < .01, Wald = 7.17) than those in other conditions. Conclusions:Informing excessive drinkers of how their alcohol consumption ranked was more effective in eliciting their seeking of alcohol-related health information than informing them of how their consumption compared to the mean. Research investigating the effectiveness of this message frame in social norms interventions more generally is needed.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Improving social norms interventions: Rank-framing increases excessive alcohol drinkers’ information-seeking.

Taylor¹,

Vlaev²,

Maltby³

et al. 2015

Health Psychology

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“…Correcting misperceived norms can present important opportunities for educational intervention. For example, many social norms-correcting educational interventions targeting alcohol consumption among college students have demonstrated effectiveness [45][46][47].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social norms theory and concussion education

Kroshus¹,

Garnett²,

Baugh³

et al. 2015

Health Educ. Res.

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Secondary prevention of harm from sportrelated concussion is contingent on immediate removal from play post-injury. To-date, educational efforts to reduce the prevalent risk behavior of continued play while symptomatic have been largely ineffective. Social norms theory may hold promise as a foundation for more effective concussion education aimed at increasing concussion reporting. The primary objective of this study was to assess whether perceived team concussion reporting norms would be less supportive of an individual's safe concussion symptom reporting behavior than objective team norms. Participants were 328 male and female US collegiate athletes. Written surveys were completed in person during the spring of 2014. Among both male and female athletes, team concussion reporting norms were significantly misperceived, with athletes tending to think that they themselves have safer attitudes about concussion reporting than their teammates. Perceived norms were associated with symptom reporting intention, independent of the team's objective reporting norm. A social norms approach to concussion education, in which misperceived group norms are corrected and shifted in the direction of safety, is an important avenue for program development and evaluation research aimed at the secondary prevention of harm from concussion. Implications for the design of this type of educational programming are discussed.

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“…Given the prevalence of MI approaches, understanding their effectiveness is clearly important for the field. The review authors have a notable history of producing systematic reviews instrumental to understanding the effectiveness of various alcohol preventive interventions for young people 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. Similarly, Cochrane is methodologically exemplary in setting international standards for conducting systematic reviews 13.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reviewing and interpreting the effects of brief alcohol interventions: comment on a Cochrane review about motivational interviewing for young adults

et al. 2015

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BackgroundCochrane recently published a systematic review on motivational interviewing (MI) for alcohol misuse in young adults. The review authors concluded that ‘there are no substantive, meaningful benefits of MI interventions for the prevention of alcohol misuse’ (p. 2), as effect sizes were ‘small and unlikely to be of any meaningful benefit in practice’ (p. 27). As most of these interventions were quite brief, we wish to open a dialogue about interpreting effect sizes in this review and of (brief) alcohol interventions more generally.AnalysisWe analyze four methodological aspects of the review that likely influenced the author's conclusions about intervention effects: (1) risk of bias assessments, (2) search strategies, (3) assessing the quality of the body of evidence and (4) definitions of sustainability and clinical significance.ConclusionsWe interpret the effect sizes found in this review to indicate modest yet beneficial and potentially meaningful effects of these interventions, given their brevity and low cost. This interpretation is consistent with other reviews on brief, MI‐based interventions and brief interventions more generally. We therefore encourage the field to re‐open dialogue about the clinical importance of the effects of MI on alcohol misuse by young adults. Rather than dismissing interventions with small effects, we believe a more fruitful way forward for the field would be to catalogue effect sizes for various alcohol interventions. Such a catalogue would help stakeholders themselves to choose which interventions meet their minimum desired impact, and thus may be suitable given their targeted populations, setting and resources.

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Social norms interventions to reduce alcohol misuse in University or College students

Cited by 217 publications

References 78 publications

Improving social norms interventions: Rank-framing increases excessive alcohol drinkers’ information-seeking.

Improving social norms interventions: Rank-framing increases excessive alcohol drinkers’ information-seeking.

Social norms theory and concussion education

Reviewing and interpreting the effects of brief alcohol interventions: comment on a Cochrane review about motivational interviewing for young adults

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