An MSU team has been nationally recognized for its paramount role in researching drinking misperceptions in college students.

The group, comprised of MSU faculty, staff and health educators, was awarded a $175,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education for their efforts in creating a model to reduce alcohol use on campus.

MSU is the only school to receive the grant award this year.

"We know a lot of people coming into college have a lot of misperceptions," said Dennis Martell, Olin Health Center director of health education. "Theory says if you buy into these misperceptions, many times it affects your behavior. If you correct these misperceptions, behavior will follow."

The team also presented its model approach on how its work has minimized harmful consequences and increased protective behavior of students at the National Conference on the Social Norms Approach, held in Cambridge, Mass., from July 15-17.

MSU has previously received grants to explore celebratory and social drinking in 2001 and 2003, Martell said.

MSU's analysis is based on the social norms approach - an idea that explains students have misperceptions of their peers, believing they drink more than they actually do, said Jim Turner, the conference's keynote speaker and executive director of the National Social Norms Research Institute.

"Individuals overestimate the degree to which their peers engage in unhealthy activities such as drinking, smoking, drug use or they underestimate safe act behaviors their peers practice," he said. "The social norms approach works to correct those misperceptions - there's a strong correlation."

The MSU Social Norms Project is a collaborative effort between East Lansing, Olin Health Center and academic departments, Martell said.

Martell, Department of Communication Chair Charles Atkin, and Director of the Health and Risk Communication Center Sandi Smith, are leaders of the project.

"In my estimation, the most valuable result of the work in this program is showing that most students are behaving in a way that is responsible and will not lead to harm," Smith wrote in an e-mail. "Also, by providing the positive facts to students, they learn they are in the majority if they drink moderately or not at all, rather than believing the stereotype that binge drinking is the pervasive norm."

The grant money will allow the MSU team to supply other schools with the information it has found. One of the biggest concentrations within the model is the education to students.

"We do what we call classroom infusion, where we go into classrooms and talk about different health topics, and it's very helpful to talk about what the real norms are on campus because often students are somewhat surprised," said Rebecca Allen, health educator at Olin Health Center and project manager of the project.

Posters, flyers and presentations also are used to help educate students.

"It's a wellness approach to reduce high-risk drinking," Martell said. "We don't tell students what to do - we just take the information we receive and give it back to them."

By giving the facts, Martell said the approach is respectful.

"For example, a majority of students think most students approve of students getting wasted," Martell said. "But more than 50 percent of students don't approve of students getting wasted."

Based on the social norms approach, reporting this fact to the students can help change misperceptions that are already developed.

"We've done a lot of research to this approach, and we believe it works and we can show how it works," Martell said. "We are actually making an impact in behavior.

"We don't chastise the students, we just tell them what they've told us."

Rachael Zylstra can be reached at zylstra4@msu.edu.