Yanovitzky Itzhak, Stewart Lea P, Lederman Linda C
Department of Communication, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA.
Health Commun. 2006;19(1):1-10. doi: 10.1207/s15327027hc1901_1.
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 such a 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), 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.
美国许多大学都在开展社会规范营销活动，目的是通过纠正对同龄人饮酒情况的误解来减少大学生的饮酒行为。尽管这些活动中使用的典型信息描述了校园内普通学生的饮酒量和饮酒频率，但许多学生可能会觉得与他人进行如此模糊的比较与社交无关。本研究比较了在预测大学生个人饮酒行为时，对关系较远的同龄人和关系较近的同龄人饮酒情况的认知的相对权重。对一所大型公立东北大学的大学生样本（N = 276）收集的数据进行分析的结果表明，正如所假设的那样，在控制了大学生饮酒的其他重要预测因素（年龄、性别、种族、校外居住情况和寻求刺激的倾向）后，关系较近的同龄人（最好的朋友和朋友）的饮酒情况认知比关系较远的同龄人（如一般学生）的饮酒情况认知更能有力地预测学生的个人饮酒行为。讨论了这些发现对设计更有效的社会规范信息的启示。
