Context matters: faculty norms on binge drinking relate to binge drinking behaviour in higher education

Van Damme et al. Archives of Public Health 2015, 73(Suppl 1):P13 http://www.archpublichealth.com/content/73/S1/P13 ARCHIVES OF PUBLIC HEALTH POSTER PRESENTATION Open Access Context matters: faculty norms on binge drinking relate to binge drinking behaviour in higher education Joris Van Damme1*, Anne Hublet1, Bart De Clercq1, John McAlaney2, Guido Van Hal3, Johan Rosiers4, Lea Maes1, Els Clays1 From Methods in Epidemiology Symposium Leuven, Belgium. 17 September 2015 Background In higher education binge drinking is an important problem. To target binge drinking in students, studying the social context of students is necessary. Faculties are social contexts in which students behave, but little is known about how faculty binge drinking norms relate to monthly binge drinking. In this study, this relationship is investigated in addition to known personal determinants. Methods Data were collected from 7,181 students in 22 facultylevel units, using an anonymous online survey. Multilevel analyses were used to investigate the relationship of both individual-level determinants (i.e., perceived binge drinking norms and social drinking motives) and faculty-level binge drinking norms, with monthly binge drinking. Results Almost two-third (62.2%) of the sample was female and the mean age was 21.06 (SD = 2.85) years. In males, significant faculty-level variance in monthly binge drinking was found. At faculty-level only faculty binge drinking norms about male students showed a positive relationship (OR = 2.586; 95%CI = [1.025, 6.522]). At individual level both perceived binge drinking norms about male and female students, and social drinking motives positively related to monthly binge drinking. In females no significant faculty-level variance was found. Only individual-level determinants (i.e., perceived binge drinking norms and social drinking motives) positively related to monthly binge drinking. No cross-level interactions were found. Conclusion Faculties are especially in men relevant environmental structures and networks to take into account besides individual determinants when targeting binge drinking in higher education. Authors’ details 1 Ghent University, Gent, Belgium. 2Bournemouth University, Bournemouth, United Kingdom. 3Antwerp University, Antwerp, Belgium. 4Association for Alcohol and other Drug problems, Brussels, Belgium. Published: 17 September 2015 doi:10.1186/2049-3258-73-S1-P13 Cite this article as: Van Damme et al.: Context matters: faculty norms on binge drinking relate to binge drinking behaviour in higher education. Archives of Public Health 2015 73(Suppl 1):P13. Submit your next manuscript to BioMed Central and take full advantage of: • Convenient online submission • Thorough peer review • No space constraints or color figure charges • Immediate publication on acceptance • Inclusion in PubMed, CAS, Scopus and Google Scholar • Research which is freely available for redistribution 1 Ghent University, Gent, Belgium Full list of author information is available at the end of the article Submit your manuscript at www.biomedcentral.com/submit © 2015 Van Damme et al. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/ publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.  (...truncated)