OTC’s ‘DeJong and DeRestless’

Dr. William “Bill” DeJong has a blog entitled DeJong and DeRestless which serves as a running commentary on campus alcohol and other drug (AOD) prevention. A takes on some great topics, from useless AOD administrator listservs to the ridiculous nature of alcohol distributors putting “Know When To Say When” and “Drink Responsibly” at the end of commercials as some sort of prevention mechanism. This week he’s challenging campus administrators to stop programming based on student opinions and votes.

To quote,

Why does student opinion matter so much? If the students had a public health background, knew the alcohol prevention literature, and understood the advantages and disadvantages of different pedagogical techniques, then maybe that would make sense, but let’s get real: they don’t have those qualifications.

Does it matter to a student panel if the course covers all of the essential content that the research says it should cover? Does it matter if there’s a test to ensure that students taking the course have learned the key content? Does it matter if there is rigorous research that demonstrates that the course is effective in changing drinking behavior? Not so much, but these students do know what they “like,” and that’s usually the shortest program available, to make taking the course as “painless” as possible.

All great points. The post goes on to address the issue of mandating such programs for new students and the continued resistance of administrators to mandate anything related to prevention. I won’t summarize the entire post for you, but this is where I’ll chime in.

Until recently I wasn’t a fan of mandates either when it came to this type of educational programming. My fear was that the end-user would consider himself (I work mainly with male students) trapped and forced into doing something he didn’t want. And suddenly, before even giving the program a chance, they would turn into robot mode and simply go through the motions, and, somehow, someway, the value of the program and the learning to be imparted would be seriously diminished.

I held this opinion for a few years until finally I began looking at it from the other direction. This whole time I had been “encouraging” groups to have their members participate in the program. At first it was just in celebrating the benefits of the program and the proven results it provided. Then by setting institutional goals for certain percentages of students to participate and passing those goals down to organizational leaders to “encourage” their members to participate.

Little did I realize at the time that those officers and representatives that I was communicating this message to were turning around and mandating it on their newest members to satisfy their perception of  my expectation. In reality, the end-user was facing a mandate just the same. Did our evaluation rates for the program go down as a result? No. Did the survey data show students were learning less? No. How about behavior change, were they stagnant or trending in the opposite direction? Absolutely not.

The value of programs like AlcoholEdu for College and other online alcohol prevention courses is proven – methods, theory, and most importantly, results. Some are definitely better than others, but that likely depends on the intended audience and desired outcomes. Ultimately those are the things that should drive the decision-making process. Not length of the program, cool factor, or popular vote.

Thanks for bringing this up Dr. DeJong. Hopefully we can continue the conversation.

As Outside the Classroom’s Executive Director of Research and Analysis and Professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the Boston University School of Public Health, and with 30 years of experience, it’s probably safe to call Dr. DeJong a heavy hitter in the alcohol misuse prevention field. Consider him added to the list of “Stuff We Like” and expect to hear more from A Peer Review on his blog, thoughts on his thoughts, and references to Dr. Dejong and Outside the Classroom in the future.

– The Public School 

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