Survey tracks substance use

Over the past 10 days, University students have received the Core Institute Alcohol and Drug Survey via e-mail. The survey data will allow the University to identify patterns of alcohol and drug use on campus and to assess the effectiveness of recent efforts to address problems of abuse.

The national survey was designed by the Core Institute at Southern Illinois University, a nationally recognized authority in the field of alcohol and drug research on college campuses. The survey is used by over 1,500 institutions across the country. The University has conducted the Core survey every three years since 1993.

"One of the main goals of the survey is to see the main trends over time," said Janet Finnie, Associate Director of University Health Services and chair of the University committee administering the survey. The survey also allows the University to compare its own data to national statistics.

The survey will serve as an "objective piece to the debate" on alcohol use that has been on-going among University administrators and trustees, according to Finnie.

"The reason we're doing the survey is because it is a topic of such importance for the University," she said. "There are concerns within the University community about alcohol use and abuse and this is an important way that we can get a sense of what the true behavior really is across campus."

"The report could hopefully be used to inform whatever policies, procedures, programs and efforts there are across campus to try and address the issues of drug and alcohol abuse," Finnie added.

The survey has been a useful tool for the Health Center's Alcohol and Other Drugs Team, whose services include short-term individual psychotherapy and support groups for students looking to control their alcohol abuse.

Data from previous Core surveys has been helpful in providing social alternatives and developing new educational therapy strategies, according to Health Services director Pamela Bowen.

"We can use the survey to better understand alcohol and drug use patterns and to plan educational and outreach activities to better meet the needs of students," Ellen Kent, director of the Alcohol and Other Drugs Team and a psychologist with the Counseling Center, said.

Data from the 1998 Core survey was used in the Social Norm campaign, a poster campaign designed to better inform students about the statistics of how many students abuse drugs and alcohol on the University's campus.

The idea behind the campaign, Kent explained, was "that if you educate people about what the norm actually is, then they will adjust their behavior to the actual norm, not the misperceived norm."

Kent said she hopes results of the survey will provide students who are in counseling with some objective data that will help them understand how their own alcohol use compares with the rest of their peers and "help them to deal with reality." Key findings included in the 1998 Core Survey Report were that 43 percent of Princeton undergraduates reported binge drinking at least once in the two weeks prior to the survey, that binge drinking was more prevalent among men than among women and more prevalent among white students than students of color.

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Also, it reported 98 percent of students believed that the social atmosphere on campus promotes alcohol use.

University officials and trustees will be closely examining the data from the 2001 survey to see how the current levels of alcohol and drug use compare to three years ago, according to Bowen.

Data collection from undergraduates ended yesterday, and data will continue to be collected from graduate students for another two days, according to Finnie.

As of yesterday morning, there was a response rate of about 25 percent, with 921 undergraduates and 179 graduate students participating.