Pubdate: Wed, 28 Apr 2004 Source: Palo Alto Weekly (CA) Copyright: 2004 Embarcadero Publishing Company. Contact: http://www.paloaltoonline.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/334 Author: Bill D'Agostino Note: Weekly Intern Cross Missakian contributed to this report. PERCEPTION OR REALITY? Palo Alto's New Anti-Drug Campaign Wants to Show That "Everyone Is Not Doing It," but Is It Putting Rose-Colored Glasses on a Community Problem? Palo Alto teen Raquel Lara doesn't drink. "But I know a lot of my friends do," Raquel, a junior at Gunn High School, said. During a recent afternoon, Raquel briefly studied new student survey results on substance abuse in Palo Alto and saw that no, not everyone in Palo Alto is doing it. She learned that more than 90 percent of Gunn students reported not drinking alcohol in a typical week. Three-quarters said they don't in a typical month. "It's pretty surprising," Raquel said. That "Ah-ha!" moment is exactly what a committee of local parents, school administrators and health experts is hoping for when students and parents ponder the newly released data. In fact, the Community Drug and Alcohol Committee hired a Montana consultant, "Most of Us," to create a local marketing campaign to challenge student perceptions of peer drug use. But is the survey giving local teens accurate information? Some drug policy experts question whether such survey data can be trusted, since it asked teens to essentially admit illegal behavior. Also, the answers to some questions aren't being reported because they don't fit the group's intended message. And a Harvard study published last year found that similar programs on college campuses were ineffective. The task force plans to use the survey's results to implement a debated method for reducing drug and alcohol use among teens, at a total cost of more than $50,000. Much of the money comes from the Palo Alto Medical Foundation and the PTA. The Palo Alto Weekly's Holiday Fund also contributed $5,000 towards the project. The theory behind the controversial technique -- known as social norming -- goes like this: Most teens misperceive how often their peers use drugs and alcohol. That view is one of the biggest factors influencing kids' decisions to drink or use drugs. Change the belief, through a carefully designed multimedia campaign, and you change the behavior. "Misperceptions can actually suppress positive behaviors," said Becky Beacom, the manager of health education with the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, who is spearheading the campaign. The point is to transform the language that the entire Palo Alto community uses when discussing teens and drugs to remove the myth that it is normal to try drugs and alcohol. "We're looking to, in effect, change a culture," said Deborah Kurland, an activist mother of three who works on the committee. The 37-question survey was administered in February to every Palo Alto middle and high school student. Taken in school over the Internet, it took approximately 15 minutes for students to complete. Questions ranged from how often kids smoked and used drugs to their thoughts on drug and alcohol use. They were also polled on how they thought "most" other students behaved and thought, to measure their perceptions (see sidebar). Students were promised anonymity. At most schools, at least 70 percent of students chose to take the survey, even though they had the option not to. Terman Middle School was the exception -- only 53 percent of students took the survey. The overall non-response rate raises questions about how statistically representational the responses are, but the school's consultant insists the data should be trusted. "We don't know who is opting out," but the numbers closely match national averages, said Jeffrey Linkenbach, the director of the "Most of Us" Montana Social Norms Project, based at Montana State University. The results show that a majority of Palo Alto students said they don't smoke, use drugs or regularly drink. Approximately 80 percent of high school students said they never used tobacco. According to the statistics, more than 70 percent have not smoked marijuana. More than 90 percent said they don't drink alcohol in a typical week. More than 70 percent said they don't drink in a typical month. Those numbers are even higher for middle school students. More than 96 percent said they never smoked marijuana. Approximately 96 percent said they haven't used tobacco. More than 94 percent said they don't drink alcohol in a typical month. Of course, that's just one way to look at the numbers. It would also be fair to say out of approximately 3,300 high school students: *Nearly 1,000 high school students have used marijuana (more than 30 percent); *More than 900 drink in a typical month (approximately 30 percent); *Approximately 700 have used tobacco (approximately 20 percent); and *Around 200 have used cocaine (around 5 percent). As for middle school students, the numbers show that more than 700 students -- out of approximately 2,300 -- have consumed alcohol (more than 30 percent), and approximately 150 (approximately 6 percent) have used over-the-counter medicines "for the purposes of getting high." Plus, the answers to some questions are being withheld because they don't jibe with the "positive" message the committee hopes to disseminate in Palo Alto. For instance, high school students were asked if they had ever consumed alcohol, but that percentage was not noted in the consultant's report. It's likely that number is above 50 percent, showing that most Palo Alto high school students have taken a drink. Also, the numbers are not broken down by grade level. National statistics consistently demonstrate that the older students are, the more likely they are to use drugs and alcohol. So while only 25 percent of the student body of Paly might drink monthly and only 31 percent of high school students have tried marijuana, by the end of senior year, both numbers are likely to be more than 50 percent. The anti-drug committee would rather the community -- and the media -- accentuate the positive numbers since that's the point of its coming marketing campaign. "The purpose of this was not to do a reporting out of data. We got the data to do the certain thing and that's a social-norms approach .. because that's the thing that's supposed to work," Beacom said. For instance, rather than stating that more than 30 percent of Palo Alto High School kids have tried marijuana, the anti-drug group will point out that 69 percent haven't. The message is already getting out. A new poster at Palo Alto High School, designed by students using the survey's numbers, proclaims that nine out of 10 Palo Alto High School students don't drink in a typical week. The headline announces, "This is who we REALLY are." The poster features a photo of a teenage girl's bare navel with a ringed finger across it. (At a recent committee meeting, Paly Principal Sandra Pearson joked that because of the picture, no one would read the text.) In addition to posters, daily video announcements and class projects will be built around the survey results. Students who've seen the numbers, however, doubt their validity. "We had a debate about that at lunch, and everybody thought it seemed a little low," Paly junior Johanna Kenrick said. "But maybe people talk about drinking more then they do [actually drink]." Even some police officers are wary of the numbers. Palo Alto Detective Wayne Benitez, who has been running a campaign to fight kids' abuse of over-the-counter drugs (see sidebar), felt the results underestimated high school use of such drugs. "I thought it would be higher," he said. Committee members say that doubt reinforces the need for the project, since the point is to correct misperceptions. "It's good news, at the same time it reveals we have something to deal with," Beacom said. After they see the figures, kids are freed up to be themselves, Beacom said. "The kids that don't use drugs and alcohol will be bolstered, knowing that they're not geeks, they're the norms," she said. Palo Alto school administrators said that the numbers appear accurate. "It fits the perspective of the administration -- of what we see and what we hear about," Gunn High School Principal Scott Laurence said. But is the group worried that the numbers will fuel denial -- that a parent whose kid is an alcoholic, for instance, will see the data and think, "90 percent of kids don't drink; My kid must not"? "I think it will be the opposite, actually," said Philippe Rey, the associate director of Adolescent Counseling Services, which has drug analysts available to Palo Alto students at school. "If you, as a parent, know that your kid is having a problem but you believe that 90 percent of kids have a problem, you may tend to say, 'Oh, it's part of being a teen, we won't look into that, he doesn't need treatment." But if a parent sees that his or her kid "is the only one having a problem," he or she will think, "'I better wake up,'" Rey added. The committee's parent leaders also believe the data -- and the new way of expressing their results -- can be used to encourage kids to do more productive things with their time. "It's another tool in your toolkit," PTA President Kate Hill said. "If your child says to you, 'I can't go to the dance because everyone who goes to the dance is drunk,' you can say, 'Actually the statistics don't bear that out. Go to the dance and have a good time.'" Next year, the committee will resurvey the students, hoping to find a decrease in the perception about the amount of drug and alcohol use, like other schools have found. The committee hopes that perception change will alter drug use. Although it has created a buzz in academic circles, social norming has also become extremely controversial. In a widely reported 2003 study, Harvard researchers examined more than 60 colleges and found that similar programs had no effect, or caused a slight surge in alcohol consumption among students. College campaigns differ in that they promote drinking in moderation versus complete abstinence. While social-norms marketing has been able to change misperceptions among students, "there's a lot of other factors that go into ultimately changing a behavior," said Toren Nelson, assistant director at Harvard University's College Alcohol Study. Likewise, some Palo Alto teenagers don't believe the local campaign will influence their behavior. "That's what other people do," Gunn senior Kui Mwaniki said after reading some of the results. "I'll do what I want to do." The Harvard researchers believe factors other than overall perception are more important to whether young adults drink or use drug, including the actions of a student's closest friends and the availability of alcohol in a community. Other drug-policy leaders question social-norming methods. "I'm skeptical of surveys. I'm particularly skeptical of surveys where you are asking someone whether they've participated in illegal behavior," said Marsha Rosenbaum, the director of San Francisco's Drug Policy Alliance. "You're likely to get low estimates there." Also, kids whose social circles drink are likely to discount the data, taking away its effectiveness, Rosenbaum added. For keeping kids away from drugs, Rosenbaum said, "there is no substitute for the facts, for good drug education and for keeping kids busy." School officials' time would be better spent using their "political muscle" to limit kids' access to drugs and alcohol, Nelson argued. Palo Alto students also might be too media savvy to be influenced by such a campaign. With all the anti-drug messages swirling around, "after a while you start to tune this stuff out," Paly junior Kim Thacker said. Social-norming proponents have criticize the Harvard study, noting that it failed to check how effectively the campaigns at the colleges were implemented. The researchers "didn't collect any data about the content of what students were seeing," said H. Wesley Perkins, a Professor of Sociology at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York, and a social-norms pioneer. Perkins is also the editor of "The Social Norms Approach to Preventing School and College Age Substance Abuse," a collection of studies by various researchers. One study published in the book found that at two unnamed "Midwestern" high schools, drinking and smoking went down 20 to 30 percent two years after they started social-norming projects in 1999. The researchers of that study, unlike at Harvard, did not research and report upon similar groups of high schools that did not have social-norming projects, to have a scientific control. Palo Alto officials are quick to point out that social norming is just one way they are trying to limit drug and alcohol use. For instance, counselors are available on campus, schools have a close relationship with local police officers, and schools require students to be driven to off-site dances. The committee members also insist they are not trying to gloss over or minimize a serious community issue. "The real message is we have good news, but we have a problem here," Beacom said. She later added: "I just think that kids deserve to know the truth." Still, part of what initially appealed to the committee in the beginning about social norming was its positive messages. "If I really believed that everyone was doing it, then I wouldn't get out of bed in the morning and come to this job, because it would be too depressing," Paly Student Activities Director Joann Vaars said. But if only 10 percent of kids are drinking regularly, she said, "I can work with that. I know who those 10 percent are." - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake