Sponsored adThis sponsor paid to have this advertisement placed in this section.
Early Interventions May Curb College Drinking
Image:
Sponsored adThis sponsor paid to have this advertisement placed in this section.
Penn State researchers are working to identify ways to prevent students becoming problem drinkers. They tested two different types of intervention approaches—peer-based and parent-based—on incoming freshman. The participants were all former high-school athletes, a group considered at high risk for heavy alcohol use, risky sexual behavior and drunk driving. The peer-based interventions required subjects to meet one-on-one with a trained peer facilitator within the first two weeks on campus, while the parent-based intervention had parents go through a 35-page handbook outlining how to discuss alcohol issues with their college kids. Results showed that parent-based intervention and peer-based intervention were most successful when students received just one or the other—as opposed to both. "From here we may be able to tailor the intervention to different types of students, identifying those students who are at different types of risk," says Michael J. Cleveland, research associate at the Prevention Research Center and the Methodology Center. "By figuring out a way to match the intervention to the individual you can also maximize your resources for intervention." Cleveland is now continuing his efforts to identify better intervention strategies among another sample of college students.
Please read our comment policy. - The Fix
Entertainment journalist and author Valerie Tejeda spends her days reporting on books, television, and all things pertaining to pop culture, and spends her nights writing novels for teens. Her stories have appeared on a variety of different publications, including but not limited to: VanityFair, MTV, The Huffington Post, TeenVogue, She Knows, Latina, The Fix, Salon.com, Cosmopolitan, and more. You can find Valerie on Linkedin and Twitter.
