Applying communication theories to prevent dangerous drinking among college students: The Ru sure campaign

Abstract

This article describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of a dangerous drinking prevention campaign on a large university campus. Members of the target audience, first‐year students, are particularly susceptible to misperceptions of drinking norms on campus given their previous experiences and environmental messages communicated to them through the media. Thus, this campaign was designed using the Socially Situated Experiential Learning (SSEL) Model (Lederman & Stewart, 1999) that builds on a framework of interpersonal communication theories, social norms theory, and experiential learning theory. Results demonstrate the effectiveness of a health communication campaign that combines both a traditional media campaign with experiential learning activities conducted by upper‐level students who serve as disseminators of campaign messages as well as role models for the target audience.