Tag Archives: student affairs

Assessing Effectiveness and Looking Ahead

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On most campuses, spring is the time to assess the effectiveness of current programs and develop budgets for the upcoming fiscal year.

Our library offers ideas for evaluating your prevention programs and updating drug, alcohol, and other policies.

If you’re hoping to ramp up your campus approach to student mental health, a new guide from the Jed Foundation can help. This national organization is dedicated to reducing emotional distress and preventing suicide among college students.

Developed in partnership with the Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC), Campus MHAP: A guide to campus mental health action planning provides a comprehensive framework for planning, engaging stakeholders in the community, and making the best use of existing resources. It also offers specific tactics for suicide prevention and caring for students’ mental health.

The guide can be downloaded as a PDF, and EDC’s series also includes four webinars for college and university campus professionals working in mental health and suicide prevention.

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Common Mistakes Made by Prevention Practitioners

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If you haven’t seen it yet, there’s a new blog out there called the SCOPE Blog. According to the blog’s website, SCOPE, the School and College Organization for Prevention Educators,  is an independent, not-for-profit membership association for prevention educators and professionals.

Every week they post what they call the SCOPE Thought Piece, a question regarding best practices for the prevention field that’s answered by a number of professionals (all of whom do amazing work in the field – hello Beth DeRicco and Linda Langford!). This week’s question is, “What are some common mistakes made by prevention practitioners that should be avoided?” Here are some brief tidbits from the responses, but go to the blog for the full discussion.

Michelle N. Issadore, M.Ed., says, “We must break out of the cycle of reacting to crises…” Read more.

Beth DeRicco, Ph.D., says, “Common mistakes include: Not linking their issue to the particular needs or concerns of the power brokers of the constituent they are working with…” Read more.

Jane Stapleton, M.A., says, “While prevention practitioners are well-intentioned, they sometimes don’t teach people the skills to prevent the problem at hand…” Read more.

Linda Langford, Sc.D., says, “One common mistake is continuing to implement prevention efforts in a way that research suggests isn’t effective…” Read more.

Alan Berkowitz, Ph.D., says, “Among the most common mistakes are lack of planning and not creating the foundation or infrastructure necessary for success…” Read more.

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Tailoring Prevention Strategies: Are There Subgroups That We Have Not Considered?

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When campus alcohol abuse prevention professionals want to develop population-based programs, they often target students based on single risk factors such as race, gender, and previous drinking behavior. But those factors paint with a very broad brush. Recently, a team of MyStudentBody researchers led by Emil Chiauzzi, Ph.D., analyzed data from more than 20,000 first-year students who had completed the MyStudentBody Essentials Course to look for previously-unidentified risk categories that might help prevention professionals target programs more closely.

Using latent class analysis, a statistical technique that reveals subgroups (classes) based on correlations between characteristics, the team looked for connections between alcohol consumption and other factors, including the use of marijuana and prescription medications for nonmedical purposes, protective behaviors that mitigate the hazards of drinking, and the experience of negative physiological and behavioral consequences from alcohol use.

The analysis divided students into four groups, based on drinking risk:

1) Low-risk drinkers: 46%

2) Lower-intake drinkers with other identified risks: 20%

3) Moderate-risk drinkers: 14%

4) High-risk drinkers: 20%

The study confirmed that the majority of incoming students either don’t drink or are low-risk drinkers, that high-risk drinking groups are largely made up of white males, that social norms perceptions become more inaccurate as the level of high-volume drinking increases, and that the use of protective tactics to reduce the amount of alcohol consumed and/or the consequences of drinking fall with the amount of high-risk drinking.

But where the latent class analysis really showed its power was in identifying a possible category of students that’s as large as the group of high-risk drinkers (20% of the sample), and suffer consequences at nearly the same rate, despite peak blood alcohol levels that are far lower than those reported by high-risk drinkers.

Students in this group—the “lower intake drinkers with other identified risks”—are also nearly twice as likely as the low-risk drinkers to have used marijuana or prescription drugs for non-medical purposes in the past year (61% vs. 33% of the low-risk group), and more likely to have used drugs than even moderate-risk drinkers (48%). Perhaps most strikingly, 79% of this group are women.

The identification of this subgroup suggests some policy and program steps. First, it’s important to include drug use in prevention programming, and to assess students for drug use in any situation that would call for alcohol assessment. In particular, female students who enter the judicial/sanctions process or come to health services with alcohol-related physiological issues should be assessed for drug as well as alcohol use. Educational programs should teach protective tactics that help limit both drinking and its consequences, and to provide training in protective measures to women as well as men—targeting sororities, women’s teams, and other female-membership organizations. And social norms campaigns should address perceptions about drug use and its hazards, as well as those about alcohol.

For more suggestions, view the full MS PowerPoint presentation Dr. Chiauzzi delivered at NASPA AOD. (Be patient; the download may take a few seconds.)

Highlights from the 2012 NASPA Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention and Intervention Conference

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Atlanta Marriott Marquis atrium

Atlanta Marriott Marquis atrium

A few weeks ago, four MyStudentBody team members attended the 2012 NASPA Alcohol Abuse Prevention & Intervention Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. It was a great conference and we learned a lot as well as talked with dozens of dedicated, passionate college alcohol and other drug professionals.

This conference, as if you couldn’t tell by the title, is “designed to address emerging issues in…alcohol and other drug prevention as they relate to student affairs, and to showcase effective policy development, thereby serving a wide range of institutional audiences, from those who are integrating and modifying policies and structure to those who would like to improve their current practices.”

That’s the conference program’s fancy way of saying that it helps departments come together to determine how to prevent and intervene on alcohol and other drug abuse among college students. It also gives students affairs professionals the skills they need to be successful.

We’ve been to this conference before. It’s SUPER informative and fits right in with MyStudentBody’s goal as a complete online alcohol, drugs, and sexual violence prevention program. It also gives us some time to meet current clients and puts faces to names, which is always fun.

This year we got to meet people from University of Georgia, University of West Georgia, Stevenson University, Kennesaw State University, Dartmouth College, State University of New York Oswego, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Agnes Scott College, St. Joseph’s University, Warren Wilson College, and Winston-Salem State University. Phew! A lot of our enthusiastic clients came to see us and it was really great to connect with them.

They agreed with us that there were some differences in the conference this year. At many past conferences, there was a focus on sexual violence/assault prevention and social norming. While these topics were certainly discussed, we and our clients found that this year’s conference was particularly centered on interdepartmental collaboration, suicide prevention, recovery programs, and addressing specific populations or subgroups of students.

That last topic, addressing subgroups of students, is especially important. Why? Funny you should ask because Emil Chiauzzi, Ph.D., our Vice President of Product Strategy, Pronabesh DasMahapatra, our biostatistician, and Beth DeRicco, consultant at DeRicco Consulting, presented on this very subject. The title of the presentation is “Tailoring Prevention Strategies: Are There Subgroups That We Have Not Considered?” and you can view the full presentation by clicking below.

A synopsis: It is critical to find ways to identify college students who are engaged in risky drinking behaviors so that prevention and intervention efforts can be targeted. This presentation is based on an innovative analysis of substance use data provided by 22,000 incoming U.S. college students. A four-group model that encompasses key indicators such a drinking patterns, risks, consequences, protective factors, marijuana use, and nonmedical prescription medication use is reviewed. Practical strategies for addressing these subgroups are also discussed.

Additionally, Tyler Achilles, our Product Coordinator, did a poster presentation on “Best Practices for Achieving a 90% Response Rate for an Alcohol and Drug Survey.” The poster is below and you can click the picture to view a PDF.

It’s pretty self-explanatory, but the key here is: although you may already be using many of these strategies to increase response rates to non-mandated surveys, making little tweaks in your process can have a huge influence. As briefly outlined in the poster, Stetson University was able to achieve a 90% response rate to its MyStudentBody survey by using these strategies, even though it’s not required. Wow! If you would like to consult with Tyler on the findings, feel free to email him or tweet him (he loves tweets!).

Well, that’s all folks. Let us know what you thought about the conference (if you attended) or our presentations in the comments.

Fulfilling Federal Mandates Part 2: Dominican College Uses MyStudentBody In Title IX Compliance

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In the first part of this series, we discussed the “Dear Partner” letter, which announced that campus drug abuse programs would be falling under increased scrutiny by the US Department of Education and the Office of National Drug Control Policy. We suggested ways that college and university administrators can step up the drug prevention programs on their campuses. In the second part of this series, we invite you to find out more about how MyStudentBody can help schools respond to another part of these new federal mandates, which was outlined in the recently distributed “Dear Colleague” letter.

Dominican College, in Orangeburg, NY, is a small college in the Catholic tradition serving about 1,800 students with professional programs in teacher education, athletic training, social work, business administration, and the health care professions of nursing and occupational and physical therapy. In addition to over 30 programs of study, the college also has a strong athletic program, sponsoring 12 intercollegiate sports in NCAA Division II.

According to Dominican College’s Prevention and Education Coordinator, Eileen A. Piccininni, MA, LPC, CASAC, CEAP, the “Dear Colleague” letter issued by the US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights last April means all US colleges will be looking more uniformly at how they handle sexual assault complaints. The letter, which the White House has declared a “significant guidance document”, reiterated schools’ obligation under Title IX to deal with sexual harassment as unlawful discrimination, and detailed the process by which institutions should respond to sexual assault complaints.

“The ‘Dear Colleague’ letter specifically references issues around sexual violence,” Piccininni says. “Every campus will be reviewing and improving methods for promoting healthy and safe environments through educating students about sexual violence issues.”

Dominican has used MyStudentBody for the past five years as part of its alcohol abuse prevention education, and began using the Essentials course, which covers sexual violence as well as alcohol and drug use, last year. Piccininni finds it an effective tool for Title IX training and documentation. “Proactively, we’ve assigned MyStudentBody Essentials as part of the curriculum for our year-long Freshman Seminar,” she says. “I also use it when I have students who violate the alcohol and other drug policy.”

As part of an educational sanction for students who violate the policy, Piccininni requires completion of either the Essentials Course or the Student Conduct Course. Piccininni has also assigned the sexual violence component of Essentials course to students whose relationships show warning signs of dating violence or potential abuse. “These courses help to increase the culture of respect for self and respect for others, instilling the importance of being an active bystander and of a shared responsibility for the safest and most healthy learning environment possible,” she explains.

And at Dominican, MyStudentBody isn’t just for students. “Every administrator in student services has been asked by our Dean of Students to take and pass the Essentials course,” Piccininni says. “We’ve recommended that faculty and other staff take it as well.”