Community Outreach Prevention: Collaboration between Two-Year and Four-Year Ins Grant uri icon

abstract

  • Two out of five college students report binge drinking, a prevalence that has not varied much over the past decade. These rates come during a time of increased prevention efforts, which include education activities, campus coalitions, and university-wide campaigns to address misperceptions of norms on college campuses. This project forges a collaboration between a two-year (PCC) and four-year (ECU) institution in addressing high-risk alcohol consumption within the shared community of college students. This project consists of two main components: 1) an off-campus social norms campaign addressing high-risk alcohol consumption and 2) enhancement of parent outreach to increase parent-child communication in regards to risks associated with high-risk drinking and alcohol-related consequences in subjects outside of health. The addition of these two components in prevention activities will further develop a comprehensive approach to prevention of high-risk alcohol consumption at ECU and will set a positive foundation for PCC to address similar issues with students at their institution. The theory driving this research endeavor is the Theory of Planned Behavior, which purports that individuals' intentions to engage or not engage in healthy behaviors is directly related to attitudes toward the behavior, subjective norms, and the individuals' perceptions of control over their own behavior. These constructs, along with knowledge of alcohol-related polices, will be measured in a pre-posttest design, in which baseline and follow-up data will be collected on the above constructs. Additionally, research supports that parental influence and communication with their children, regarding their alcohol consumption behaviors, can play an important role in student engagement in healthy alcohol consumption behaviors. This data, in conjunction with the limited utilization of parental involvement when it comes to alcohol use on college campuses, led the researchers in this project to explore ways to foster healthy parent-student continued communication regarding healthy behaviors, particularly in the area of alcohol use. While ECU currently offers some prevention activities targeting parents of students who attend their institution, most of these activities occur during the beginning of their child's college career. For example, parents are targeted in the orientation sessions to discuss safety and alcohol, in addition to the information regarding completion of the online freshman education course. With the exception of a brochure provided to parents when students begin their freshman year and articles via the Parents1 Newsletter, the outreach to parents is limited. With regards to PCC, the two-year institution we are partnering with for this project, will be a stepping stone for their college administrators to further enhance the outreach to their parents to encourage them to have discussion with their children. We plan to enhance the existing services already offered by the Office of Parent Services at ECU, which will also be used to support parents of students attending the four-year institution as well as students attending the two-year institution. An internet presence will be made via the Office of Parent Services website. Resources will be used to develop an additional page on the Office of Parent services website. This page will be dedicated to resources for parents related to alcohol use and tips for parents to continue discussions about alcohol use throughout the college career. Additionally, the social norms campaign will entail the development, pilot testing, and implementation of intervention messages. The ECU and PCC students will provide input on effective messaging and channels, and through a variety of data collection methods (both quantitative and qualitative), the researchers will implement the tailored

date/time interval

  • July 2009 - June 2010