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Nov. 11, 2010

The Garrett County Drug Free Communities Coalition recently began year two of the Majority Rules Social Norm Campaign. During the 2009-2010 school year, the campaign promoted the message that “7 out of 10 Northern and Southern students don’t drink [alcohol].” The message for year two is again positive, a spokesperson noted. It is “82% of Garrett County high school students do not smoke weed [marijuana].”
The message was phased into the community over several weeks, as was done in the first year, with the statement printed on pencils, buttons, wristbands, banners, and T-shirts, most of which were distributed at the middle and high schools.

The first week of the campaign promoted simply the “Majority Rules” logo on pencils. During week two, small buttons/pins with “82%” were handed out, a spokesperson explained. Finally, in week three, wristbands with the full message were distributed, followed by T-shirts about a month later. Students had to present one of their former promotional items in order to earn a T-shirt.

“The Majority Rules Social Norm Campaign is a process,” said Sadie Liller, prevention specialist and member of a team that has been developing the campaign. “We have to give it time to work. We hope to shift the way most people see things from the more extreme visible behavior to the less noticed but much more common healthy behaviors that are the norm.”

The theory behind social norm campaigns is that a person’s behavior is influenced by his or her perceptions of what is “normal” or “typical,” Liller said, but persons “often severely misperceive the typical behaviors or attitudes of peers.”

A social norm campaign is designed to change perceptions, which then change behaviors, she explained.

According to coalition members, research shows that social norm messages targeted at the true norm (in this case, that most students don’t smoke marijuana) will change youths’ perceptions, which will influence their behavior to not engage in the risky behaviors.

The data for the Majority Rules Campaign was produced in the 2007 Maryland Adolescent Survey, which 842 Garrett County middle and high school students completed.

The data was reviewed by staff not only for 2007, but also back to 1994 to make sure that the data “wasn’t a one-time thing,” Liller said.

“The data was amazingly consistent each time the survey was administered (1994, 1996, 1998, 2001, 2002, 2004, and 2007) for both alcohol and marijuana use,” said Kendra Todd, health education and outreach director. “We did listen to some feedback about last year’s campaign, though. Some felt that it was misleading to put middle school and high school data together, so this year, we used only high school data to determine the marijuana-use statistics.”

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