1Perspectives on Social Norms: Student, Practitioner, and Researcher

This Working Paper includes three perspectives on the social norms approach, one from a student (Greg Joiner), a second from a practitioner (Koreen Johannessen), and a third from a researcher (Brad Smith). They were initially published by the International Center for Alcohol Policies (ICAP) on their website (www.ICAP.org), which hosts a regular feature with “invited opinions ” on current issues in the alcohol field. For the interested reader, a statement of ICAP’s mission is provided below. The Report on Social Norms is extremely grateful to ICAP for allowing it to reprint these pieces here. To complement these three perspectives we have added an overview of the specific social norms campaign that is described in the student paper, and a response (by this Editor) to concerns brought up in the research paper. (Note: The ICAP papers have been edited slightly to improve readability.) The ICAP invited opinion by student Greg Joiner is possibly the first published report of a student’s experience with a social norms campaign. It reminds us that we must not neglect the experiences and perspectives of our students as we try to document the effectiveness of our interventions. Although the social norms approach is, by definition, accountable to students (who are involved in the design and evaluation of campaigns and their messages) we have rarely taken the time to solicit their perspec-tives in writing and in case study narratives. With the development of rigorous qualitative research and narrative methodologies this is now possible and should become standard practice in the field. The first of the two pieces added to supplement the ICAP Invited Opinions is by jennifer baurele, the director of th