Title: Parent-Child Communication to Reduce Heavy Alcohol Use among First-Year College Students
Abstract: With extreme rates of drinking among young adults, college students continue to be a primary focus for a range of alcohol prevention efforts. Most universities are attempting to change the alcohol environment by implementing a variety of strategies to reduce heavy drinking among college students. With the exception of parental notification policies, there have been relatively few strategies utilizing the role of parents in alcohol prevention programming. Guided by the constructs of the Health Belief Model, this paper presents an exploratory study of parent-child communication as a prevention strategy to reduce heavy drinking among first-year college students. Background The highest prevalence of both drinking and heavy drinking in 2002 was seen among young adults ages 18-25 (SAMHSA, 2002). The rates of drinking among college students is nearly double the rates for high school students, which may indicate that the college environment encourages high risk drinking. Many students view heavy drinking as a rite of passage that everyone must go through in life (Waiters, Bennett, & Noto, 2000). Young adults aged 18-22 enrolled full-time in a college were more likely than their peers not enrolled full time to use alcohol, drink heavily, and drink (64% to 54%, respectively) (SAMHSA, 2002). Wechsler, Lee, Kuo, Seibring, Nelson, & Lee, (2002) reported 44% of college students in 2001 were classified as drinkers. O'Malley and Johnston (2001) reported data showing that two of five American college students can be labeled binge drinkers, with drinking (heavy drinking) being defined as having five or more drinks in one sitting for a male and four for a female. Because heavy alcohol use is such a problem on college campuses, many universities have implemented a variety of programs as a means to reduce heavy drinking. Some universities are attempting to reach the entire campus via universal approaches by combating the social norms of drinking by trying to reduce the misperceptions of college drinking of students (Waiters et.al., 2000). Several schools have implemented social norms campaigns as a universal approach to promote environmental change on college campuses. The effectiveness of social norms campaigns, however, is the source of controversy among prevention specialists (Wechsler, Nelson, Lee, Seibring, Lewis, & Keeling, 2003). Another environmental approach widely adopted by universities is the implementation of substance-free alternative programming. This can be seen at schools such as Boston College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where substance free late night programs have been adopted to show college students that there are other things to do around campus other than alcohol-related activities. These late night activities also offer students who abstain from drinking the opportunity to engage in alternate activities with other students with similar interests (Higher Education Center, 2001). There are few published research studies evaluating the effectiveness of substance free alternative programming. To date, parents of college students have been largely underutilized in prevention strategies to reduce heavy drinking among college students. Rather than being proactive in preventing alcohol-related situations, involvement of parents is more often reactive through parental notification policies, which typically involve parents only after their child has undergone judiciary proceedings for violating campus or community laws or policies regarding alcohol or experienced an alcohol-related injury (Zweig and Thompson, 2001). Parents often underestimate their role in their child's life once their child has left for college (Turrisi, Wiersma, & Hughs, 2000). This probably stems from the assumption that the influence parents exert in their child's life is radically reduced when their child is away from home and at college. …
Publication Year: 2008
Publication Date: 2008-03-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 16
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