Massachusetts Daily Collegian

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

Massachusetts Daily Collegian

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

Massachusetts Daily Collegian

The truth: right from the horse’s mouth

Believe it or not, in a random sample of University of Massachusetts undergraduate students 82 percent of them said they haven’t missed class or work because of their drinking. And the survey was – regardless of popular belief – not limited to wellness floors and honors classes. The data collected for the Social Norms Campaign is legitimate, and its message is evident. People drink less than the UMass campus community thinks they do.

The Social Norms Campaign is a program run by the Center for Health Promotion and the Campus and Community Coalition to Reduce High-Risk Drinking. The campaign was created based on the social norms theory that claims people’s perceptions of the attitudes and behaviors of their peers strongly influence their behavior.

Utilizing this theory, a random, anonymous survey is distributed every spring to UMass undergraduates. Selected students are asked numerous questions about alcohol and other drug use, perceived or otherwise – questions about how much surveyed students drink and how much they think others drink.

As it turns out, there is a large discrepancy between how much students actually drink and how much students think others do. According to the social norms theory, this means students feel pressure to drink as much as they think their peers are drinking, regardless of whether these perceptions are accurate or not. The campaign tries to point out that UMass students are not drinking as much or as often as the campus’ students may believe of their peers.

In high school, most health education courses gave lectures on what not to do instead of focusing on the healthy choices students could make to replace irresponsible behavior. Think about past messages used in the campaign. These posters list out how a majority of students  feel comfortable refusing a drink (whether it’s the first or fifth) only have four or fewer drinks at parties, don’t like out of control parties and want others held accountable if they violate alcohol policy and/or are violent.

What does this all mean? It means most students are saying they have fun in ways healthier than binge drinking. And while the media often promotes the wildest, most extreme images of college partying, only some students engage in this kind of behavior – but most don’t.

Think about all the students at UMass, and then think about a night walking down North Pleasant Street to one of the various bar dives on the downtown strip. It is impossible that all 20,873 undergraduates are out and drinking on a regular basis – the bars would be overflowing with drunken students. Only a very small portion of the UMass population can be caught down at the bar scene at any given time. And while high-risk drinkers tend to make themselves, whether intentionally or not, the most noticeable bar attendees, people tend to believe incorrectly that these are the only kinds of students that make up the University community – but in fact they represent a minority of the student population.

Drinking legally is absolutely acceptable. No one can fault a student for sharing an evening out with friends sipping on a couple brews. The campaign isn’t looking to make UMass a dry campus. Its aim seems to be more about helping students realize that there isn’t an overwhelming atmosphere of pressure to drink, and that the concept of drinking culture cultivated in the minds of the majority at UMass is based on misperceptions. Responsible drinkers make up UMass’ true majority, and it’s important that students who feel pressured to live up to the hype of “ZooMass” know this.

Promoting healthy drinking habits will make everyone safer and happier. Students should try to drink responsibly and healthfully; students should never feel pressured by their peers to match drinks. Human behavior is comprised of “monkey see, monkey do” actions. As such, it is important students have an accurate view of the behaviors they are inevitably going to emulate.

Amy O’Regan is a Collegian contributor. She can be reached at [email protected].

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  • M

    Marisa HMar 9, 2012 at 9:34 am

    Great article! Great to hear from the silent majority!! Thanks Amy!!

    Reply
  • E

    Ed CuttingMar 7, 2012 at 5:02 pm

    It was back in the fall of 2010 that I questioned the stats, and after they got done demanding to know “which office I was from” and otherwise trying to bully me, and after Sally Linowski then tried to intimidate me by looking up my OIT email address and responding to me there and not to the address I actually use (that’s real close to a FERPA violation folks — although she also is a charter member of ACT and we won’t even get into what that little star chamber does) — after all of that — she told me this:

    They survey a “random, representative” sample of 2000 undergradutes.” They get a 31% response rate which she alleges is “well within the mean for web-based surveys on this campus and nationally.”

    OK, here are the problems:

    1: Sampling method — exactly how do they calculate ‘representative’? That does matter.

    2: Weighting your response rate. Say you have a group, half male and half female, but only the guys respond to the survey — a 100% male response rate. Would this be reflective of what the women in the group think? Or of the group as a whole? You quite likely could get 0% responses to questions like “have ever worn a bra” — remember it is only the guys answering — which would then allow you to state that UMass women don’t wear bras.

    The women you sent surveys do wear bras, they just didn’t reply to your survey, but a quite clear one.

    3: Respondent motivation. OK, you now go do your bra survey at Smith College, and lets presume that this is the 1970s when bras were politically charged and women were either wearing them or burning them depending on their views on radical feminism. The woman who is late for a date with her boyfriend genuinely intends to fill it out when she gets back, but then there is the Econ prelim and the Chem lab report and her response rate is going to be quite low because she – quite frankly – really doesn’t have bras on her top ten list of priorities. But the woman who is organizing a bra burning will not only fill it out herself but get all her friends to do so too. She is motivated and you will get a much higher response rate from her.

    So you could then get a survey saying that no woman at Smith wears a bra as well — and this is because the women who do didn’t respond.

    This is the problem with the 1:4 women will be raped statistic — it was based on a paper survey in MS Magazine, where the respondent had to find a stamp & envelope and mail it in as well. We can all understand how a woman who had been subjected to that unspeakable terror would be far more motivated to respond to the survey, can’t we?

    4: UMass has about 5000 judicial charges per year — which just happens to be about the size of the freshman class. About 4000 of these are first offenses — so we are looking at about 2/3 to 3/4 of the undergraduate student body being on some sort of judicial sanction. This number is large enough to cause all kinds of problems in accuracy.

    5: For some twisted reason you need to know the average male penis length on campus. So you stand outside a dining commons with a clipboard and ask every guy who walks by.

    Do you honestly think all the guys — or any of the guys — are going to tell you the truth. Better yet, you hire really attractive women in scanty outfits to do your survey for you. Do we really have any doubt what would happen — and when you only have a 1/3 response rate, we aren’t even getting into which third would self-select to respond in the first place.

    And that would be how we would find out that the average um guy has a 21″ penis. And the next year the average would be 25″ because guys would know about the 21″ statistic and to impress the pretty girl would fabricate an above average number. This is how we managed to kill something like five TIMES the ENTIRE population of Vietnam during that war — people just kept inflating body counts until they were utterly meaningless.

    6: They are conducting a survey of sexual practices and your girlfriend’s father (or boyfriend’s mother) is the one asking you the questions. Are you going to share everything you have done with his “little girl”? Really?

    7: The university is sending you a survey inquiring if you have broken any rules, for which you know they will punish you. Gonna admit it?

    I am waiting for Whitmore to announce that Garth Brooks will be singing at spring concert in response to overwhelming student demand as indicated via survey.

    Reply
  • A

    AnonMar 7, 2012 at 2:56 pm

    I understand what you are getting at here. The social norm thing is definitely true. However, the bars in town ARE overflowing with drunken students…ever drive on North Pleasant at 1am? Also take into account that only about half the student population is old enough to drink at the bars anyway. This was an informative article and I believe that the idea of the perceived social norm is an important one to point out, and yes, it’s true that most students are not binge-drinkers, but it doesn’t mean we’re all angels either.

    Reply
  • H

    hmmMar 7, 2012 at 11:42 am

    i think every knows those statistics are bs. where did they come from exactly? how is the survey administered and how do we know we can assume all those people are self-reporting accurately? it’s a statistical chimera.

    Reply
  • E

    Ed CuttingMar 7, 2012 at 3:33 am

    When they hire an objective independent entity to conduct this survey — one that has no vested interest in the results — then I will believe it. Likewise that Garth Brooks is the favorite musician of Americans age 25 and under, that Moxie is America’s favorite soft drink, etc.

    The fact that that UHS alleges that something like 87% of the student body believe that one should be punished more harshly for doing something out of intoxicated stupidity than as a malicious hate crime makes me question all their statistics.

    Like, umm, 87% of the student body think that hate crimes are OK? Possibly, but could we have an independent outside entity verify that because I’m not so sure….

    Reply