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A preliminary analysis of results from more than 3,000 college students required to take an online alcohol prevention program in 2002-2003 demonstrates that a newly developed strategy - "Population-Level Prevention" - effectively moderates high-risk drinking, the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA) announced.
The results show that schools where all first-year students had to take the online program, AlcoholEdu, saw statistically significant self-report reductions in consumption, higher rates of abstention, and adoption of protective behaviors intended to minimize the consequences of drinking.
In 2002, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), released a Call to Action, a report on college drinking which cited staggering statistics of an emerging public health concern on college campuses: 1,400 alcohol-related deaths, 500,000 alcohol-related injuries, 70,000 alcohol-related sexual assaults, 2.1 million incidences of drunk driving, and 159,000 first-year student dropouts every year.
"College administrators have been working long and hard - often with little visible success - to reduce the abuse of alcohol by underage college students. But now we are starting to see promising results from new prevention strategies," said Gwendolyn Jordan Dungy, Executive Director of NASPA, at a press conference at the group's Washington, D.C. offices. "One such strategy is online Population-Level Prevention programs that schools implemented last year. Preliminary data indicate that colleges committed to attacking the problem through numerous strategies - including mandatory alcohol education for entire populations of students - can effect measurable changes in individual behaviors."
Assessment data from eight universities that required their entire entering first-year classes to take AlcoholEdu in the fall of 2002 revealed that, among 3,100 students who took the course:
- The proportion of students abstaining increased 10 percent, from 39.4 to 43.4 percent of the total after taking AlcoholEdu
- Among students who continued to drink, the average number of drinks consumed per week declined more than 13 percent, from 9.9 before taking AlcoholEdu to 8.6 when measured a month after completing the program
- The incidence of certain high-risk drinking behaviors, such as "pre-loading" - drinking at home before going out for the evening - decreased as well
- And, more students adopted healthier and safer behaviors, such as pacing drinks at one per hour and avoiding drinking when taking prescription medications.
"These findings strongly suggest that students' social networks - which can spread high-risk patterns of drinking - can also be used to change behavior," said Dr. Keeling. "That's the power of Population-Level Prevention - an interactive, online prevention program can be a truly transformational experience that motivates behavior change."
"When NASPA forged a strategic alliance with Outside The Classroom two years ago, Population-Level Prevention still was a theory," said Kevin Kruger, Associate Executive Director of NASPA. "But now the results are in: schools applying theory to practice by administering online prevention to their entire first-year classes are starting to see a change in their student drinking behaviors. Population-Level Prevention may become a 'best practice' that will get results for colleges implementing it as a component of their comprehensive alcohol prevention programs."
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