University Overview

The University of Tennessee is a public institution located in the urban setting of Knoxville, Tennessee. It has an enrollment of approximately 26,400 students.

Project Background

In 2002, the Princeton Review identified the University of Tennessee (UT) as the number one party school in America. While this designation was not determined by research-based methods, it did correspond with concerns on campus. In response to this report, the university implemented the Fall Prevalence Survey in 2004 to assess the campus' drinking culture. The survey revealed that UT had high, heavy, and frequent drinking rates, and numerous reported negative consequences. The university acknowledged the nature and scope of the alcohol problem and sought ways to address it by organizing the Safety, Environment, and Education (SEE) Committee and redesigning the campus' prevention infrastructure to form a more organized, coherent, and focused effort to address alcohol abuse prevention.

Program Funding Source

Funding was provided by the University of Tennessee's Safety, Environment and Education Center operating budget.

Program Objective

The SEE Committee's strategic planning sessions resulted in the initiation of two distinct interventions: enhanced training of UT residence hall staffs and a five-component social norms media campaign. The campaign's goal was to address UT students' misperceptions of alcohol use, decrease exposure to messages that reinforced unhealthy perceptions regarding college alcohol use, and increase exposure to messages that corrected these beliefs with five distinct components.

Baseline Data

At the time of the 2004 Fall Prevalence Survey, UT had a heavy-drinking rate of 48%, and a frequent heavy-drinking rate of 27%. Additionally, students reported a host of negative experiences, including: 33% had missed classes, 36% had memory loss, 57% had vomited, 26% had performed poorly on a test, and 59% had experienced a hangover. While drinking behaviors at UT were elevated compared to regional rates, students' perceptions of the environment were even more exaggerated. Ninety-six percent of students believed that students consumed alcohol once a week or more, and they also believed that the typical student consumed eight drinks per occasion.

The survey also indicated that the environment was conducive to alcohol misuse. Sixty-six percent "did not know if the campus had an alcohol prevention program", 48% reported that they "did not abide by the university alcohol policy", and 61% reported that "the alcohol policy was not consistently enforced". The assessment found that many students (66%) consumed alcohol in their residence halls and that different residence halls had various patterns of policy violations. Some halls had as few as 20 policy violations per year while other halls had more than 300.

Methods Employed

Residence Hall Staff Training
The SEE Committee informed the hall director (HD) and resident assistant (RA) of the patterns of policy enforcement and subsequent outcomes. It emphasized the consistency of enforcement early in the year, to set a tone on campus and better predict community outcomes throughout the year. Training moved beyond just providing information on how to care for intoxicated students.

Social Norms Media Campaign

• The first component of the five-component social norms media campaign was to reduce students' exposure to negative messages. This was done by encouraging UT's student newspaper to reduce the percentage, severity, and frequency of alcohol advertising.
• The second component was to craft media campaigns to reinforce healthy norms. This component added a health and safety session during orientation in 2005. The presentation provided new students with accurate information regarding the healthy norms of UT's students.
• The third component consisted of placing a poster highlighting normative healthy drinking behavior in each residence hall room upon the students' arrival on campus.
• The fourth component was to provide accurate normative information to impressionable incoming students. Approximately 50% of first year UT students completed an online alcohol and drug education assignment in thier first-year studies course. The assignment included normative information and individualized feedback.
• The fifth and final component consisted of utilizing the campus newspaper by placing healthy ads that countered the advertisements by bars and restaurants. Two advertisements were placed in the newspaper each week, highlighting the healthy behaviors of the majority of students.

Evaluation

The funding of the SEE Center allowed for prevalence surveys on an annual basis since 2004. The web-based, in-house Fall Prevalence Survey (FPS) consisted of items commensurate with those from the Core and Monitoring the Future surveys. The survey included nationally comparable items including high-risk drinking, frequent high-risk drinking, perceptions, and negative consequence scales. A full year of pre-test survey data was obtained prior to implementation of the SEE Center. The survey provided the center with data on student drinking and consequences. Included in the survey were questions asking where students consumed alcohol (private party, residence hall, bar, etc.). The variables of interested included, but were not limited, to:

• Annual, 30 day, heavy drinking and frequent heavy drinking
• Associated negative consequences of drinking as identified by the Young Adult Alcohol Problem Scale (YAAPST) (Hurlbut & Sher, 1992)
• Student awareness of policy, student perception of policy enforcement, and student knowledge of prevention programs

Project Results

Residence Hall Staff Training
With increased consistency of enforcement, significant changes occurred with the student perceptions of alcohol on campus climate. According to the 2004 survey, when asked if the campus had alcohol policies, only 29% of students who responded reported that they were aware of the policies in 2004, but this number jumped to 93% in 2005 and 99% in 2006 after the staff training sessions. Likewise, student perception of policy enforcement increased to 73% in 2006, up from 52% in 2004 and 54% in 2005.

Social Norms Media Campaign
Through the implementation of the social norms media campaign, the SEE Commitee observed significant reductions in UT student's perceptions of drinking behaviors on campus. The average number of drinks students perceived the typical student to drink in a week decreased from eight in 2004 and 2005, to five drinks in 2006. There was also a significant reduction in the severity and frequency of alcohol advertising in the school newspaper. The percentage of alcohol-related ads decreased from 16% in the summer of 2005 to 11% in the fall of 2005 to 6% in the spring of 2006.

Significant Improvements After Two Years
While the 2005 alcohol use prevalence rates were consistent with the previous year, significant reductions in both heavy-drinking rates and frequent heavy-drinking rates occurred after two full years of enhanced residence hall staff training and a full year of the five-component social norms media campaign. Heavy-drinking rates decreased by 27% and frequent heavy-drinking rates decreased by 44%. These trends continued in 2007, resulting in total reductions since program implementation of 35% (heavy drinking) and 53% (frequent heavy drinking).

Further Information

The University of Tennessee's Safety, Environment, and Education (SEE) Center, campus data, and media campaigns are available at http://web.utk.edu/~seeweb/SEE_Media_Campaigns.html.

Contact

Dan Reilly, Director
Safety, Environment, & Education Center
University of Tennessee
203 University Center
Knoxville, Tennessee 37996-4800
Phone: (865) 974-9565