In 1992 the University of Arizona (UA) Campus Health Service received a Fund For The Improvement Of Post Secondary Education (FIPSE) grant from the U.S. Department of Education to conduct campus wide substance abuse prevention activities aimed at reducing both heavy and high risk drinking among students. In 1994 UA was awarded a 1.8 million dollar grant from the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP) to implement and test strategies to prevent heavy and high-risk alcohol use among undergraduates. One of the strategies was social norms marketing, a relatively new approach first implemented on the campus of Northern Illinois University by Michael Haines and the Health Enhancement staff at the student health center.

Social norms marketing is a strategy based on the work of Drs. Wes Perkins and Alan Berkowitz who, in the mid 80’s, uncovered the widespread misperception/over-perception held by college students about drinking among their college peers. Perkins and Berkowitz hypothesized that if the misperceived norms could influence students to drink more, the true norms could influence students to drink less.

Since the UA is a large campus (37,000 students in 2003/2004), our prevention staff knew that exposing students to information with enough frequency to affect the accuracy of knowledge about the norms for student drinking would require a new approach to campus education/prevention. Social norms required that our staff learn social marketing techniques – message development, media design, and media placement. In our first year of social norms marketing, our media campaign was confusing, unattractive and failed to deliver the norms. But by 1995, we had learned to use graphic design and simple messages placed in our school newspaper to get our messages seen and remembered by students.

Since 1994, the UA’s substance abuse prevention program has used a two-pronged approach: norms perception correction and environmental management. Through environmental management UA has set policy and influenced enforcement of laws both on and off campus through campus and community collaborations. Environmental management at the UA has underscored and enhanced the norms of the majority.

Within 3 years of the start of this two-pronged approach (social norms marketing and environmental management), heavy drinking at the UA decreased by 29%; and Homecoming, our largest and most problematic celebration event, became safer as documented by significantly fewer alcohol related incidents and police calls.

Since 1994, UA has been awarded seven additional grants – including a U.S. Department of Education Model Program Award - to further the scope of its substance abuse prevention programming. The Challenging College Alcohol Abuse (CCAA) program is now listed in the SAMHSA Registry of Effective Substance Abuse Programs.

The materials presented throughout this site are intended to serve as a supplement to A Practical Guide to Alcohol Abuse Prevention: A Campus Case Study in Implementing Social norms and Environmental Management Approaches. The Guide was developed in accordance with one of the goals of the CSAP grant. To obtain a copy of the Guide, please contact the Health Promotion & Preventive Services office at (520) 621-5700 or download a copy (.pdf format) from the guidebook section of this website.