Study: Most effective means of preventing alcohol abuse not the most common

A lot has changed on college campuses in the last 30 years, but alcohol consumption by college students has remained constant, according to Inside Higher Ed.

A story by Iza Wojciechowska, Trinity '08 and former news editor of The Chronicle, looks into the ways universities address alcohol abuse in light of policy recommendations made by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in 2002. A recent study by researchers from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health found that the best methods to prevent excessive drinking have not been implemented.

The NIAAA's recommendations divided up approaches to curb drinking on college campuses into four tiers based on their effectiveness. One-on-one interventions for at risk students were deemed most effective, or a part of Tier 1, while Tier 2 strategies include urging government officials to regulate liquor licenses and ensuring that local venues ID students in order to prevent underage drinking.

Of the schools that have used strategies that the institute endorsed, large schools—with more than 2,500 students—had more success than smaller ones.

"Large universities are more likely to use interventions, responsibly train servers and issue compliance checks to curb underage drinking in their communities," the Inside Higher Ed story noted.

Six years after the recommendations were released, however, 22 percent of universities polled by the researchers said they were unaware of the NIAAA's recommendations.

And although many universities are still getting around to implementing the guidlines, at least one of Inside Higher Ed's sources believes that the recommendations are already outdated. James Turner, executive director for the National Social Norms Institute, pointed out that the recommendations rely on data from 12 years ago. College campuses, he said, have since changed.