Evaluation of a university’s smart partying social norms campaign including emoji-style messaging

ABSTRACT

Background: Given the media saturated world today’s college students occupy, novel messaging needs to be utilized to cut through the noise to influence their perceptions of a perennial issue facing their population – problematic drinking behaviors.

Method: The current study developed and implemented a year-long, multi-channel campaign effort by using the well-worn social norms framework in combination with a messaging tool all students are aware of – emojis – to produce messages seen by about half of the student body.

Results: Campaign exposure was related to increased perceptions of the prevalence of safe partying behaviors, as well as the number of students who reported being more aware of what gets put into their drinks while partying. A non-social norms message – one with a percentage less than 50% of the population – also was related to increased perceptions, indicating that buttressing numerous social norms messages with one that is not may lead to a halo effect.

Conclusions: Future research should strive to isolate emojis’ efficacy within health campaign messaging to determine if they can be used as a useful strategy to engage with college students, or just a passing fad.

KEYWORDS:

• Social norms
• emojis
• campaign
• college drinking
• alcohol
• partying
• behaviors
• college health

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The same analysis was also run using only people who indicated they saw the campaign’s messages. The results were the same for the ‘know what’s in your drinks’ message, but the analysis also revealed that the percentage of people who use a designated driver was significantly different at the 2-semester stage (87.3%) than at the pre-campaign stage (81.1%), Z = 2.36, P = .02 for those who indicated they were exposed to the campaign.

Additional information

Funding

This project was funded in part by: University Residences at Purdue University; Purdue University Student Health; Purdue University Office of the Dean of Students; and Purdue University Recreation and Wellness.

Notes on contributors

Evan K. Perrault

Evan K. Perrault, PhD (Michigan State University, 2014), is an assistant professor of health communication in the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University. His research interests center around campaign design and evaluation, as well as information-seeking behaviors and needs of patients in helping them choose healthcare providers.

Grace M. Hildenbrand

Grace M. Hildenbrand, MA (Texas State University, 2014), is a doctoral student of health communication in the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University.

Tamara F. Loew

Tamara F. Loew, MA, is the senior assistant director of wellness programs at Purdue University.

William G. Evans

William G. Evans, MEd, is the assistant director of health and wellness programs at Purdue University.