Table tents in the dining halls seem to have always been around to inform diners about student organizations, important deadlines, and upcoming events happening around the UNH campus. But as of late, they have been used to do more than that.
One recent table tent included a page that read, "Over half the UNH campus participates in alcohol-free activities! 52 percent are involved in clubs or organizations!"
Ads like this are part of Health Service's latest effort to promote facts about alcohol use on campus which will include more ads in table tents and posters in dorms and other buildings on campus.
Melissa Nicholson, the alcohol, tobacco and other drug educator and counselor at Health Services, is new to the position in which she said it will be her responsibility to handle the educational programming at the university.
Nicholson said the increase in visibility of the facts about student alcohol use is possibly due to grant funding from a regional coalition called ONE Voice Southeastern. The money was given to help run the Social Norms Campaign, an evidence based strategy.
But where do these facts come from?
The table tent facts came from a survey conducted in February of 2009. According to Nicholson, the survey is done every other year and this one in particular was administered to over 4,000 randomly selected students, of which the return was about 1,500 students.
Sophomore Robert Wise, who filled out a survey his freshman year, said the questions seemed pretty general.
"I answered them honestly," he said.
Health Services works with an institutional review board to make sure they have a representative sample based on gender and class size. Without a representative sample, the results cannot be published.
"In any good survey you want to make sure that you have a good return and that you have a good representative distribution in all the areas that you're looking for," said Nicholson.
The survey posed questions to the sample about their drinking habits, such as do you drink, how many drinks do you have in a sitting, how many times a week do you go out to party, and how many times do you think a UNH student drinks in a week?
Some of the facts that came out of this survey said that 77 percent of UNH students track their drinks in order to protect themselves from risks, six out of 10 students drink four or less times per month, and over 3,000 students choose not to drink each weekend.
"I want to support low risk," said Nicholson. "If you are drinking, you're using protective factors like eating before you go out, you're counting the number of drinks, you're drinking in a group of friends. For the high risk users, we're going to send messages out about what other students are doing."
Another fact from the survey stated that 24 percent of students don't drink alcohol in a typical week, meaning what is usual in a normal week for a certain student.
"I know some students will look at that stat and convert it right away," said Nicholson. "But that message is to support the 24 percent who aren't drinking."
"All I know about the survey is that they appear as statistics on the table tents," junior Samuel Judd said. He said the statistics didn't make any sense to him, and that they "seemed off."
Wise said that while he found the table tents amusing, he thought UNH could think of a more effective campaign spin.
"I think they're hilarious," Wise said. "I think they [the table tents] should focus more on the alcohol awareness and not how many people drink."
Nicholson said the crafting of the message is the most important part of the campaign.
"I do think that we can do a better job of that," said Nicholson. "I want to run some focus groups this spring to get more student input on the messages we use next year."
Nicholson said that in any survey there is room for error, but there is no other recourse to have. The next survey will be conducted in February of 2011
"One of the things that stand out for me is the numbers pretty much run consistent," said Nicholson. "I don't see any red flags."
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