Drugs on Campus

“Both/and” is better than “either/or” in campus efforts relating to alcohol

A socio-ecological model of campus health promotion in regard to alcohol-related issues and concerns entails a conscious effort to address influencers on behaviour that are operating at different levels of individuals’ interaction with their surroundings. It therefore aims in significant measure at bringing about changes to the campus setting: e.g., improving organizational structures and administrative procedures, and enhancing the campus ethos of integration and connectedness. This is done with a view to making the impact of these contextual features on campus members more conducive to their well-being.

Health promotion’s broad orientation subsumes rather than ignores the more conventional healthcare emphasis on attending to individuals’ welfare and seeking to help them manage their own behaviour in a more health-supporting manner. Situated within and relativized by the wider dimensions of health promotion with its encompassing holistic agenda to shape environments in a more wholesome direction, this latter more particular thrust of individual-focused intervention remains an integral aspect of efforts to further the cause of wellness for campus community members.

In the past two decades, much advance has been made in confirming what sort of approach with such singularly targeted interventions is most effective for encouraging change in their attitudes and behaviour on the part of college students facing or liable to difficulties with drinking. Counselling practitioners and other, non-specialized services personnel are often now better equipped to provide motivational enhancement and offer helpful feedback and support around various cognitive-behavioural skills such as the use of personal protective strategies. The BASICS (Brief Alcohol Screening and Intervention for College Students) program and other like-minded resources (e.g., Walters & Baer, Talking with College Students about Alcohol) have been key implements for this purpose.

There remains a need for appropriate personalized messaging to students around their expectancies for and motivation in drinking (among various salient discussion points on their alcohol use). Given other demands on institutional budgets, professional staff is not available in sufficient numbers to permit one-on-one or within group face-to-face sessions for all students who could benefit. Hence more post-secondary schools have been seeking web-based interventions that would reflect a comparable tone and present similar content accessible for entire student bodies and sub-populations.

One question that arises is whether such electronic offerings can prove nearly as therapeutic in prompting and assisting students toward responsible drinking practice as do the well attested direct encounters. An informed verdict on this comes from a recently released examination: Carey, K.B., Scott-Sheldon, L.A.J., Elliot, J.C., Garey, L. & Carey, M.P. (2012). Face-to-face versus computer-delivered alcohol interventions for college drinkers: A meta-analytic review, 1998-2010. Clinical Psychology Review, 32(8), 690-703. The conclusion of this rigorous analysis found both types of intervention associated with short-term decrease in drinking, and face-to-face sessions more effective on reducing risk across a wider range of alcohol use outcomes and also more lasting in their impact. This finding accords with intuitive expectations that the relational dynamics of direct personal encounters of a positive nature cannot be fully reproduced in online presentations, however congenial and affirmative.

For purposes of achieving more extensive outreach and more productive personal impact within economic constraints, a combined offering would appear appropriate in which there is opportunity to relate to students via either or both of these two delivery vehicles. Again, however, it will be even more beneficial to pursue a “both/and” health promotion tack from a more comprehensive standpoint. From that vantage, complementary environmental initiatives (both regulatory and connectedness-building) are supplemented rather than superseded by such individual-focused interventions.