That's the conclusion of a University of Iowa study in the latest issue of Health Communication.

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Flaws in campaign
Social-norms ads and poster campaigns use facts or statistics to correct student misconceptions about the drinking habits of their fellow students. The message is that most students are moderate drinkers or non-drinkers.

While social-norms campaigns are all over US campuses, the authors of this new study contend there are flaws in this approach to reducing student drinking.

These campaigns are based on the assumption that students don't really know what the correct norm is, that they are likely to underestimate how many people are really drinking responsibly, and that a 'correct' message will change their behaviour, Shelly Campo, an assistant professor of community and behavioural health at the university, says in a prepared statement.

These campaigns also assume that students want to be like the typical student, which is difficult to define, particularly at a college or university with a large or diverse student population, Campo says.

How the study was conducted
For this study, she and her colleagues surveyed 550 students at a medium-sized northeastern university where social-norms campaigns had been used for three years. The study found the students' perceptions about their friends' drinking had a significant impact on drinking behaviour.

The drinking behaviour of male friends had the greatest impact on both male and female college students.

But the study found students' perceptions about the drinking behaviour of a typical student did not seem to affect their drinking behaviour, a finding contrary to the social-norms model. - (HealthDayNews)

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