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Student athletes are generally at greater risk of abusing alcohol than their college peers. As a result, they are also more vulnerable to the effects of binge drinking and other forms of alcohol misuse. These risk factors for alcohol abuse and its sometimes life-threatening effects are increasingly the target of school-wide substance abuse prevention policies that would seek to curtail the problem. This article takes a closer look at how, more specifically, drinking disproportionately affects college athletes, and describes some of the ways that schools are responding in an effort to prevent alcohol abuse in this population.
Studies have found that college athletes tend to drink with greater frequency and in greater amounts when they do drink, with the result that they also tend to experience more of the effects of alcohol abuse. In its 2001 “Study of Substance Use Habits of College Student Athletes,” the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) surveyed 21,225 athletes and found roughly 80 percent of them drank in the past 12 months. Those who drank experienced “high rates of negative consequences,” according to a 2006 summary in an article in the Journal of General Psychology:
More athletes than non-athletes are also more likely to meet the definition of “binge drinkers,” based on 2008 findings in the journal, Addictive Behaviors, and research elsewhere. (That means they consume on average four to five drinks in the course of a one two-hour period.) The same study cited the following trends as being associated with this higher risk profile for binge and heavy drinking among college athletes: “higher sensation seeking, overestimation of peer heavy drinking, non-use of protective behaviors while drinking, and higher enhancement and coping drinking motives.”
Schools have responded by introducing various interventions aimed at student athletes with the goal of preventing alcohol abuse. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has detailed a number of these “best practices to address student-athlete alcohol abuse”, as “evidence-based strategies” identified by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Addiction (NIAAA). Such prevention efforts have included the following measures compiled by the director of the University of Virginia’s Gordie Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, Susan Bruce:
In a 2001 study, researchers tested the success of a “social norm feedback campaign” for Division I student athletes. They found that student athletes who received two to three sessions of small group education and personalized feedback regarding their alcohol use, peer drinking norms, consequences of alcohol use, and skills for reducing alcohol abuse and risks, experienced a decrease in negative alcohol-related consequences.
The same NCAA publication cited above said alcohol abuse programs that have had the greatest success are based on collaboration among student athletes, coaches, athletics staff and prevention specialists, and typically involve a mix of the above approaches.
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