Moderating Social Norms Interventions: Field Experiment

描述（由申请人提供）：社会规范干预策略被广泛用于大学校园，以减少大量饮酒和酒精相关的伤害。有强有力的证据表明，学生误解（高估）饮酒的水平，这是规范的同龄人，它认为，规范的压力有助于大量饮酒。通过向饮酒者提供准确的规范信息，社会规范方法试图改变人们错误的规范信念，从而减少他们的饮酒。然而，在大学校园实施的社会规范营销策略的评估是社会规范理论的普遍适用性，以减少饮酒穷人的测试。该研究建议通过实验来研究在受控的真实饮酒环境中为饮酒者提供规范饮酒信息的影响。年轻的美国居民在进入蒂华纳之前，将在圣地亚哥的墨西哥边境进行采样。参与者的饮酒计划和规范信念将被测量，然后参与者将被随机分配到实验条件下，他们将获得不同类型的准确规范饮酒信息。这些相同的参与者将在他们从蒂华纳返回时重新采样，他们的饮酒水平将通过BAG呼吸测试进行客观测量。这项研究将检查参与者在蒂华纳饮酒是否受到规范信息的影响。虽然社会规范研究通常是在大学生中进行的，但这项研究将是新颖的，因为它将测试对不同饮酒人群的社会规范干预。除了测试一个简短的，面对面的规范饮酒干预是否会影响短期饮酒量外，我们还将操纵几个变量，假设这些变量可以减轻干预的影响。沟通说服理论认为，规范信息应该更有说服力的程度，接受者参加，相信信息，并相信它是个人相关的。我们将研究是否不同的规范性信息的说服属性的影响，参与者的酒精消费。这项研究将有助于社会规范机制的理论理解，以及解决如何提高其适用于现实生活中的干预措施。公共卫生相关性：学生饮酒对大学校园构成严重威胁。社会规范营销策略被广泛用于减少校园饮酒，然而，这些策略的有效性好坏参半。这项研究将有助于确定可能提高社会规范干预效果的因素。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Social norms intervention strategies are widely used on college campuses to reduce heavy drinking and alcohol-related harm. There is strong evidence that students misperceive (overestimate) the level of drinking that is normative among their peers, and it is argued that normative pressure contributes to heavy drinking. By providing drinkers with accurate normative information, social norms approaches attempt to change peoples' erroneous normative beliefs and, consequently, reduce their drinking. However, evaluations of social norms marketing strategies as implemented on college campuses are poor tests of the general applicability of social norms theory to reducing drinking. The research proposes to examine experimentally the impact of providing drinkers with normative drinking information in a controlled, real-world drinking environment. Young U.S. residents will be sampled at the Mexican border at San Diego before they cross into Tijuana. Participants' drinking plans and normative beliefs will be measured, and then participants will be randomly assigned to experimental conditions where they will receive different types of accurate normative drinking information. These same participants will be resampled as they return from Tijuana and their drinking levels will be measured objectively through a BAG breath test. The research will examine whether participants' drinking while in Tijuana was impacted by the normative information. Although social norms research typically has been conducted on college students, this research will be novel in that it will test a social norms intervention on a diverse drinking population. In addition to testing whether a brief, face-to-face normative drinking intervention affects short-term alcohol consumption, we will manipulate several variables hypothesized to moderate the impact of that intervention. Communication persuasion theory suggests that normative information should be more persuasive to the extent that recipients attend to it, believe the information, and believe that it is personally relevant. We will examine whether varying the persuasive properties of the normative information effects in the impact of participants' alcohol consumption. This research will contribute both to the theoretical understanding of social norms mechanisms, as well as address ways to increase its applicability to real-life interventions. Public Health Relevance: Student drinking poses a serious threat on college campuses. Social norms marketing strategies are widely used to reduce alcohol consumption on campus; however, the effectiveness of these strategies has been mixed. This research will help identify factors that might improve the efficacy of social norms interventions.