Environmental Prevention of DUI Among College Students

This program used an environmental approach to driving under the influence (DUI) prevention among college students. Students were exposed to a DUI intervention that included a social marketing campaign, a media advocacy campaign, and increased law enforcement in the form of DUI checkpoints and roving DUI patrols. Each checkpoint received local news coverage, and the campus newspaper ran stories related to driving under the influence. The social marketing campaign was student-designed, and included advertisements posted in various places around campus. Checkpoints were conducted on three main streets surrounding the campus to increase the perception of risk of arrest for DUI, as well as to catch offenders.

The goal of this program is to decrease driving under the influence among college students.

The program was evaluated using a quasi-experimental design to compare the students at the intervention college with students attending a comparison college. A pre- and post-intervention telephone interview of randomly selected students found that self-reported past year DUI decreased significantly from pre-test to post-test (odds ration = 0.55) at the intervention school. Rates at the comparison campus remained did not decline.