Perception and reality: a national evaluation of social norms marketing interventions to reduce college students' heavy alcohol use.

Objective: To evaluate a widely used intervention to reduce college student alcohol use, we studied student drinking patterns at colleges that employed social norms marketing programs and those that did not.

Method: We examined responses of students in the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study (CAS) 1997, 1999 and 2001 data sets at 37 colleges that employed social norms marketing programs and at 61 that did not. Information about the students' drinking behavior and their familiarity with social norms marketing messages at their schools was analyzed, as were college administrators' reports about the implementation of social norms marketing campaigns.