The Survey of Alcohol Usage and Perceptions.

Social norming campaigns that work to show the disparity between students' perceptions of campus drinking and actual levels of drinking have proven to be successful in reducing alcohol use by college students. The premise of social norming is that human behavior is greatly influenced by perceptions of the population from which acceptance is desired. When the actual drinking levels of the campus population, which typically are lower than perceived levels, are publicized, students tend to moderate their drinking to fit the actual, rather than the perceived characteristics of the student body. At the University of Mississippi, researchers have been developing a Survey of Alcohol Usage and Perceptions (SAUP) as a practical approach to gathering essential data for a social norming campaign. This paper describes items for the SAUP and provides suggestions for publicizing the measured data. The SAUP, which was deemed face valid by the university's task force on binge and abusive drinking, contains a brief introductory statement followed by 16 questions and 4 demographic items. (Contains 11 references.) (SLD)