A Peer Facilitated Intervention to Reduce Risky Drinking Among Fraternity and Sorority Members
Methods: Eight houses (4 fraternity and 4 sorority) were randomly selected and then randomly assigned to either treatment or control conditions. Peer educators were trained in brief motivational interviewing techniques and went as a group of six to a treatment house. House members were asked to respond on paper to six questions about quantity and frequency of drinking and answers were compared to campus-based norms. Participants were then engaged in a discussion about the discrepancies between personal use and campus-based norms in an effort to promote behavior change. Pretest data were gathered from the treatment and control conditions prior to implementation of the intervention, and posttests were gathered 30-days following treatment. Outcomes included typical and maximum eBAC along with alcohol-related consequences. Focus groups were also conducted with 43 treatment group participants for their insight into the intervention.
Results: Matched pre-post data were available for 57 respondents from the sorority treatment group, 58 respondents from the sorority control, 43 from the fraternity treatment group, and 38 from the fraternity control (total n=196). No differences were found at follow-up for the treatment condition compared to control. Themes from the focus groups centered on credibility of both the normative data (which wasn’t trusted) and the peer educators (who were not believed). There was a wide-spread belief that students intentionally misrepresented their drinking behavior on the campus-based survey used for the normative data. Many respondents also were dismissive of peer educators who did not appear savvy about Greek life, although there was significant debate about the wisdom of using peer educators who were members of fraternities/sororities. Respondents also believed the intervention to be ineffective because they had reached saturation on the topic of alcohol risk reduction. In this group, it appeared that all alcohol programming was perceived in the same way regardless of the general message or approach. Participants were also quite defensive and angry with the perception of greater alcohol-related issues among Greek life members as being the driver for a focused intervention.
Conclusions and Implications: Overall, while the quantitative results indicated no differences between treatment and control, focus group findings give important insights into norms-based interventions. Attention must be paid to establishing credibility of the normative data. Messages are more meaningful when delivered by trustworthy sources like chapter presidents or other leaders, as opposed to unknown peer educators. Using valued members of the community to provide peer education may also help reduce the natural defensiveness of being considered a high-risk group in need of intervention.