Findings You Can Use

Yanovitzky, I., Stewart, L. P., Lederman, L. C. (2006). Social distance, perceived drinking by peers, and alcohol use by college students. Health Communication, 19(1), 1-10.

[Link to full article - (1.11 MB)]

Abstract: Many colleges in the United States are employing social norms marketing campaigns with the goal of reducing college students' alcohol use by correcting misperceptions about their peers' alcohol use. Although the typical message used in these campaigns describes the quantity and frequency of alcohol use by the average student on campus, many students may find this vague comparison to others to be socially irrelevant. This study compares the relative weight of perceptions about alcohol use by distant versus proximate peers in the prediction of college students' personal drinking behavior. The results of analyzing data collected from a sample of college students at a large public northeastern university (N = 276) show that, as hypothesized, perceived alcohol use by proximate peers (best friends and friends) was a stronger predictor of students' personal alcohol use than perceived alcohol use by more distant peers (such as students in general) even after controlling for other strong predictors of alcohol use by college students (age, gender, race, off-campus residency, and sensation-seeking tendencies). The implications of these findings for the design of more effective social norms messages are discussed.

Major Findings:

• Social comparisons to peers occur at different levels. The term "peer group" may nest four distinct types of peers:

1) the peer cohort (people who are the same age as the student),
2) the reference group (the group of students in the cohort with whom the student identifies most),
3) the peer cluster (a small and cohesive group of close friends who tend to share similar values, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors),
4) the dyad (best friend pairs).

• Estimates of peers' alcohol use tended to increase with increasing social distance from peers. Thus, students estimated that their best friends typically drink more than they do in social settings, that their friends drink more than their best friends, and that other students on campus drink more than their friends.
• Personal drinking depends not only on the perceptions about alcohol use by peers, but also on a student's social distance from peers.
• Perceptions of alcohol use by best friends and friends were the strongest predictor for personal alcohol use (other factors such as age, gender, race, on-campus residency, and sensation-seeking tendencies were controlled for).