A Case Against "Binge" as the Term of Choice: Convincing College Students to Personalize Messages about Dangerous Drinking

TY - JOUR

T1 - A Case Against "Binge" as the Term of Choice

T2 - Convincing College Students to Personalize Messages about Dangerous Drinking

AU - Lederman, Linda C.

AU - Stewart, Lea P.

AU - Goodhart, Fern Walter

AU - Laitman, Lisa

N1 - Funding Information: Research reported in this paper was funded, in part, by grants from the U.S. Department of Education Safe and Drug Free Schools Program, U.S. Department of Education Fund for the Improvement of Post Secondary Education, Rutgers University Health Services, and Rutgers University Department of Communication. A version of this paper was presented at the National Communication Association conference in Atlanta, GA, in November, 2001. Funding Information: In order to institutionalize the line of inquiry that has been carried on in recent years by the authors as an on-going collaborative entity, The Center for Communication and Health Issues (CHI) was founded on the belief that communication is an integral part of the relationally-based nature of health issues. [In the last three years CHI’s work has been funded by the United States Department of Education Safe and Drug Free Schools Program ($240,000; $98,000), the New Jersey Higher Education Consortium on Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention ($15,000; $15,000; $15,000), the U.S. Department of Justice ($400,000); the Rutgers University Health Services ($10,000), Rutgers University Department of Communication ($5,000) and the Communities Against Tobacco Coalition of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (NCADD) ($10,000).] With its funding, CHI has engaged in on-going qualitative research into drinking practices on the campus, and also created and administered a survey instrument, the Personal Report of Student Perceptions (PRSP) (1998, 2000), designed and administered intercept interview survey instruments (1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002), developed various curriculum infusion projects and, most importantly, in terms of understanding students, CHI has developed the Socially Situated Experiential Learning Model (SSEL) (Lederman & Stewart, 1998). The model identifies the conceptual bases that can be used to understand the socially situated nature of college drinking. It relies most heavily on experiential learning theory, which argues that learning is cyclical. A person has an experience, reflects on that experience, draws some conclusions about the lessons to be drawn from that experience, and then uses those lessons as part of his or her basis for reactions to future experiences (Kolb, 1984; Lederman, 1992). In terms of college drinking, for example, Burns and Goodstadt (1989) and Burns, Ballou, and Lederman (1991) report that students who engage in risky sexual behavior while drinking do not perceive themselves as outcasts in their social circles since in their everyday ‘‘experience’’ their behaviors are the norm as they perceive them. Cohen and Lederman (1998) found that students valued their own first hand experiences as ways of learning how to drink, unaware of or unconcerned by the potentially life-threatening consequences of learning by trial and error. Experiential learning theory would suggest that it is important to look at the reflection that students do about their drinking and the conclusions to which it leads them. If they interpret fellow students’ reactions to heavy drinking, for example, as making them seem socially attractive, then they may have ‘‘learned from the experience’’ to drink heavily. Copyright: Copyright 2008 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

PY - 2003/1

Y1 - 2003/1

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=0037268169&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=0037268169&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1080/10810730305734

DO - 10.1080/10810730305734

M3 - Review article

C2 - 12635812

AN - SCOPUS:0037268169

VL - 8

SP - 79

EP - 91

JO - Journal of Health Communication

JF - Journal of Health Communication

SN - 1081-0730

IS - 1

ER -