$2.8 million NIH grant funds research on college drinking

Five-year study examines how perceived peer pressure impacts alcohol consumption

Perceptions of peer drinking of alcohol may be the strongest predictor of excessive alcohol use among college students, according to new research by Clayton Neighbors, a professor and director of the social psychology program in the Department of Psychology.

Neighbors is the principal investigator for a $2.8 million grant funded by the National Institutes of Health titled, "Social Norms and Alcohol Prevention (SNAP)" to address problem drinking among college students. UH is the primary site of the five-year study which also includes Loyola Marymount University and the University of Washington.

"College students drink more alcohol than any other segment in the population, leading at times to negative consequences from missing class, risky sexual behavior, depression, driving under the influence, trouble with authorities, injuries and even fatalities," Neighbors said. "We have established in previous research studies that students overestimate drinking by their peers, and that influences their own drinking. If you can change those perceptions, you can change their drinking."

Starting in January, the study will assess campus-wide norms of drinking behavior by screening 2,000 UH students. The students will be invited to participate in the study by e-mail and asked to take a brief computer-based survey to report their demographic characteristics, personality traits and typical drinking behavior, and related experiences.

Students who meet the criteria for the study will be asked back to participate in a longer battery of questions. Information gathered from this survey will be used to develop personalized normative feedback – a brief individualized intervention consisting of feedback given to each student in person about their own drinking, their perceptions of other students' drinking and data on students' actual drinking.

“Students drink what they perceive to be a 'normal' amount, but most overestimate the actual 'normal' amount,” said Neighbors.

His research shows that the typical alcohol consumption for a college student is no more than three or four drinks each week. However, students often think their peers are drinking much higher quantities than that each week and frequently base their own drinking habits on those inflated assumptions.

“The extent to which you have these exaggerated perceptions, the more likely you are to engage in heavy behavioral problem drinking, gambling or whatever the behavior is,” Neighbors said.

The research study is predicated on the theory that changing those perceptions through intervention can change the behavior. “We show them what is reality, with the hope of bringing down the problem behavior,” he said.

Neighbors notes this study builds on previous research studies and refines the measure of perceptions of drinking in college students to better understand what social and individual factors lead to their drinking. The overarching goal of the proposed research is to improve the understanding of why, for whom, and under what conditions personalized normative feedback is most effective.

"If you are going to use social influence interventions, you really have to know who these people care about," Neighbors said. "That's what we're suggesting, and that is what this data will tell us at the end of five years."

- Melissa Carroll