Penalty for excessive celebration: An evaluation of a social marketing campaign to reduce celebratory drinking

Celebratory drinking at individual events on college campuses involves drinking at higher levels than that seen on typical weekend nights. This paper focuses on the data analysis performed for a hazardous drinking event called the “Fourth-Year Fifth” in which some students consume a fifth of liquor prior to the start of the last home football game. To minimize these behaviors, the Gordie Center for Alcohol and Substance Education at the University of Virginia worked with the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention Team peer educators to develop the 2009 social norms marketing campaign and survey. Social norms marketing is an intervention strategy designed to correct misperceptions about the prevalence of a particular behavior. Students overestimate peers´ participation in the Fourth-Year Fifth; thus, the Gordie Center developed a campaign to correct misperceptions in order to reduce hazardous drinking at the last home football game. The data analysis of survey results showed that while self-reported exposure to more campaign elements was associated with lack of participation in the targeted celebratory drinking, the percentage of participants was similar to prior years. The survey also revealed that participants overestimated the overall participation rate. The evaluation also revealed several issues with the survey and sampling method. The survey contained ambiguous questions, and omitted a key question on drinking behaviors of students who did not attempt the Fourth-Year Fifth, which limited the evaluation of some campaign objectives.