Designing Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention Programs in Higher Education BRINGING THEORY INTO PRACTICE
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Designing Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention Programs in Higher Education BRINGING THEORY INTO PRACTICE U.S. Department of Education Designing Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention Programs in Higher Education BRINGING THEORY INTO PRACTICE U.S. Department of Education Additional copies of this book can be obtained from: The Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention Education Development Center, Inc. 55 Chapel Street Newton, Massachusetts 02158-1060 http://www.edc.org/hec/ 800-676-1730 Fax: 617-928-1537 Production Team: Kay Baker, Judith Maas, Anne McAuliffe, Suzi Wojdyslawski, Karen Zweig Published 1997 This publication was produced under contract no. SS95013001. Views expressed are those of the authors. No official support or endorsement by the U.S. Department of Education is intended or should be inferred. ■ Contents A Social Role Negotiation Approach to Campus Prevention of Alcohol and Other Drug Problems by Thomas W. Blume • 1 The Web of Caring: An Approach to Accountability in Alcohol Policy by William David Burns and Margaret Klawunn • 49 An Integrated Theoretical Framework for Individual Responsibility and Institutional Leadership in Preventing Alcohol and Drug Abuse on the College Campus by Gerardo M. Gonzalez • 125 A Social Ecology Theory of Alcohol and Drug Use Prevention among College and University Students by William B. Hansen • 155 College Student Misperceptions of Alcohol and Other Drug Norms among Peers: Exploring Causes, Consequences, and Implications for Prevention Programs by H. Wesley Perkins •177 Institutional Factors Influencing the Success of Drug Abuse Education and Prevention Programs by Philip Salem and M. Lee Williams • 207 ■ Preface From Fiscal Year 1988 through Fiscal Year 1991 the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) of the U.S. Department of Education sponsored a grant competition through its Approaches to Accountability in Prevention Program. The purpose of the competition was to foster the development of papers involving theoretical applications of alco- hol and other drug (AOD) prevention at institutions of higher education that administrators in higher education could use to plan more responsive AOD programs for students. Small grants were awarded to colleges and uni- versities to support faculty and administrators in writing papers to discuss not just theories or models of prevention but also possible applications of those theories. This volume contains six of the seventeen papers written under the aus- pices of the Approaches to Accountability in Prevention Program. We are pleased to present them and hope that they will advance the thinking and practice in the AOD prevention field. A SOCIAL ROLE NEGOTIATION APPROACH TO CAMPUS PREVENTION OF ALCOHOL AND OTHER DRUG PROBLEMS Thomas W. Blume Oakland University Introduction Alcohol abuse and illicit drugs on college campuses, although not new, became major concerns in the United States during the decade of the 1980s. While roots of these problems lie in the larger society, educators, in a grow- ing consensus, now recognize the specific and disastrous impact of drugs on the health and academic performance of their students. Beginning in 1988, the U.S. Department of Education began funding campus drug-abuse pre- vention programs through the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education thereby stimulating innovations in practicing and conceptualizing prevention within this population. This paper reviews the literature on alcohol and other drug abuse by col- lege and university students and develops a theoretical model that addresses alcohol and other drugs as social phenomena. This Social Role Negotiation Model (SRN) is described in detail, including its linkages to theories in the fields of developmental psychology, sociology, conflict studies, and addiction studies. Following this description, the model is applied to the campus environ- ment. Viewed from the Social Role Negotiation perspective, some traditions in higher education are seen as working against prevention goals. The paper concludes with preliminary recommendations for the reconsideration of sev- eral aspects of college and university life. About theories and theorizing At the outset of a theory-formulation project, it seems important to establish the need for such an effort. If no one uses theories, there is no need to con- tinue refining, revising, and replacing them. It also seems necessary to review the criteria that can be applied to evaluate such a project. The following sec- tion reviews ideas about the functions that theories may perform and dis- cusses the need for continual revision and extension. Functions of Theories Theories seem to be essential tools for handling complex problems because of their delimiting or streamlining function. A theory is like a map—useful 2 ■ BRINGING THEORY INTO PRACTICE because it can be carried around, reproduced in multiple copies, and exam- ined while one sits in one place. The real, more complex terrain, on the other hand, requires one to go out to see it, and it can hardly be reproduced. The map simplifies, or limits, the observer’s field of view to those aspects most relevant. A good theory, likewise, defines what parts of a situation one should attend to. The opposite also seems to be true: theories offer differing opinions as to what can be ignored. That this is the primary function of theories has been confirmed by one theorist who refers to theory-building as a “deliberate simplification of the system to what are regarded as its essential elements. This process of abstract- ing the essential elements of the system is the main task of theory, and with- out theory of some kind, no communication is possible, even in the most commonplace conversation” (Boulding, 1966, p. 237). A second reason for theorizing is to provide a basis for decision making. Given a complex situation, it would be helpful to have some assumptions about the ways in which different elements influence each other. The college campus, particularly as it addresses problems with the use of alcohol and other drugs by students, is such a complex situation. One's responses to this situation will depend on one's assumptions about the relative contribution of factors such as parents’ attitudes and the parents' own substance use; faculty and administrator attitudes and their substance use; availability and cost of substances; stresses and challenges faced by students; alternative rewards and stress-reduction techniques available to students; campus traditions of use and non-use; drinking establishments on or near campus; and alcohol adver- tising. Planning to alter existing patterns may involve either striving to retain old campus traditions or attempting to change those traditions, depending on the way in which they are viewed. A third reason is that a theory helps in evaluating one’s efforts. Referring to campus prevention efforts, one expert notes, “It is not sufficient to say that the goal of prevention is to reduce alcohol and drug abuse. Prevention means different things to different people. It is difficult to measure” (Gonzalez, 1988). A theory that identifies related elements of behavior will allow the prevention specialist to measure correlates of use and non-use, even though the desired outcome—prevention of substance abuse and relat- ed problems—cannot yet be evaluated. Finally, a theory can help one evaluate the relevance of others’ ideas and suggestions. Suppose as professors that we believe that six to eight hours of sleep are required for physical rebuilding and for the unconscious mental processing of stressful events. To remain true to this belief, we must ignore the suggestions of efficiency-oriented colleagues who encourage us to sleep only three or four hours during the busiest part of the semester. Similarly, it would be a waste of our time to attend seminars entitled “Reclaiming the lost third of your life—Sleep less and do more.” Lacking clarity about basic assumptions, we could be pulled in several directions at once with no basis for choosing among our sources of advice. A SOCIAL ROLE NEGOTIATION APPROACH ■ 3 Naïve Theories George Kelly (1955), whose Personal Construct Theory has become a model for recent cognitive approaches to clinical psychology, expressed the belief that people base all their behavior on their theories about the world around them. Others agree that the process of using theories and, for that matter, building and refining them is not found exclusively among academics: “Scientific theory consists merely in doing in a formal and rigorous way, tak- ing special precautions against false inference and false perception, what we do all the time in ordinary life and conversation” (Boulding, 1966, p. 237). Primitive myths and abstract theologies alike can serve as theories of exis- tence. George Herbert Mead (1934), whose teachings formed the basis for many contemporary theories in psychology and sociology, used the term “mind” to describe the human capacity to organize experience through inter- pretation and anticipation. Both developmental and clinical psychologists have studied naive theo- rizing, showing that everyone uses theories in daily life and that one’s theory system may be quite different from another’s. Swiss researcher Jean Piaget (1926) concluded that the early behavior of infants demonstrates a process of testing, revising, and expanding theories about their behavior and its effects on the world of objects. Infants can be seen participating in a “category-build- ing process,” noticing relationships between objects such as that between a toy dog and a real dog (Fischer, 1980). Problems with Theories Theories fall short of their goals for many reasons. Some are replaced because they are oversimplified, like maps with significant areas of terrain left blank. Others fail because of the opposite error, like maps with so much detail that they cannot fit in anyone’s map case. Still others have been insufficient- ly abstract, proving useful only under limited circumstances. Furthermore, theories may lack validity if they are based on incorrect assumptions or faulty data, developed on faulty logic, or designed to serve a political ideology.