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Welcome to the Web Site
of the National Social Norms Institute

The National Social Norms Institute opened its doors in 2006 at the University of Virginia, a nationally renowned public institution.  The Institute’s origins began in 2000 with the establishment of the National Social Norms Resource Center at Northern Illinois University.  Since moving to UVA, the mission expanded to include research, evaluation, and dissemination of information on the social norms approach to the field. Our goals are to demonstrate and facilitate the extension of the methodology to other health issues and other populations. The NSNI advisory board consists of prominent researchers and academicians in the field.

The National Social Norms Institute is made possible through a generous gift from the Anheuser Busch companies and its charitable foundation.

We enjoyed another fabulous conference in Philadelphia July 11-13th. Highlights included innovative ways to use the social norms approach such as addressing financial saving practices among women, accessing mental health care and engaging engineering students in celebratory drinking prevention.

We are well on our way planning next year’s conference and will post the details soon.

Virginia Commonwealth University, a NSNI Grantee, was awarded First Place by the National Federation of Press Women for it’s Stall Seat Journals in the category of Original Poster Campaign.

Additionally, the American College Health Association selected Virginia Commonwealth University’s Wellness Resource Center for an award for its work improving the health of VCU students. VCU was honored for its “Clicker-enhanced Social Norms Marketing Intervention” program, which aims to improve the health of students by reducing high-risk drinking and related harm. The program combines a campus-wide social norms campaign and the use of audience response technology (clickers) in alcohol education sessions.

A new video was released featuring Dr. Wesley Perkins providing a short (9 minute) overview of the social norms approach to health promotion.  Click here for WMV VIDEO format or MOV VIDEO format. (Note:  The MOV formatted version may take a few minutes to download on some computers.)

NSNI is pleased to announce that archives of The Report on Social Norms, a publication founded and edited by Dr. Alan Berkowitz, are now available on this web site. The Report was published from 2001 to 2005 in various formats, such as quarterlies and working papers, and is an excellent resource for early materials on the approach.

Individual issues and indices organized by author, topic, and title, in PDFs, can be found under the Resources section of this site.

Recent Research

An impressive number of articles were published last year concerning the role of social norms in a broad range of areas, including gambling, tax compliance, energy conservation, risky sexual behavior, and high-risk alcohol consumption. As always, complete abstracts for these articles are available in the section of our web site devoted to Recent Research.

Cimini, M. D., Martens, M. P., Larimer, M. E., Kilmer, J. R., Neighbors, C., & Monserrat, J. M. (2009). Assessing the effectiveness of peer-facilitated interventions addressing high-risk drinking among judicially mandated college students. Journal of Studies on Alcohol & Drugs, Supplement 16, 57-66.

Cross, J.E. & Peisner, W. (2009). RECOGNIZE: A social norms campaign to reduce rumor spreading in a junior high school. Professional School Counseling, 12 (5), 365.

DeJong, W., Schneider, S.K., Towvim, L.G., Murphy, M.J., Doerr, E.E., Simonsen, N.R., et al. (2009). A multisite randomized trial of social norms marketing campaigns to reduce college student drinking: A replication failure. Substance Abuse, 30 (2), 127-140.

Keller, A., Frye, L., Bauerle, J., & Turner, J.C. (2009). Legal ages for purchase and consumption of alcohol and heavy drinking among college students in Canada, Europe, and the United States. Substance Abuse, 30, 248-252.

Keller, A. & Bauerle, J. (2009). Using a logic model to relate the strategic to the tactical in program planning and evaluation: An illustration based on social norms interventions. American Journal of Health Promotion, in press.

Latkin, C., Donnell, D., Celentano, D.D., Aramrattna, A., Liu, T.Y., Vongchak, T. et al. (2009). Relationships between social norms, social network characteristics, and HIV behaviors in Thailand and the United States. Health Psychology, 28 (3), 323-329.

Mallett, K.A., Bachrach, R.L., & Turrisi, R. (2009). Examining the unique influence of interpersonal and intrapersonal drinking perceptions on alcohol consumption among college students. Journal of Studies on Alcohol & Drugs, 70 (20), 178-185.

Moreira, M.T., Smith, L.A., & Foxcroft, D. (2009). Social norms interventions to reduce alcohol misuse in university or college students. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2009, 3, CD006748.

Schmidt, E., Kiss, S.M., & Lokanc-Diluzio, W. (2009). Changing social norms: A mass media campaign for youth ages 12-18. Canadian Journal of Public Health. Revue Canadienne de Sante Publique, 100 (1), 41-45.