The Research: FAQs about the True Numbers

What are the True Research Numbers and do we need them?

The term ‘True Numbers’ refers to survey statistics about college students' health-related behavior. Over and over again, at VCU and nationally, college students overestimate how much and how often their peers drink alcohol and engage in other potentially harmful behaviors. The “true numbers” are needed and advertised to expose the large gap existing between what students perceive to be normal behavior and what students report on surveys about their true behavior.

Why does advertising the truth matter?

Research suggests that correcting misperceptions provides valuable support for health. If students know that the true social norm for their peers is healthy, then they are more likely to persist in their own healthy choices. It’s not our job to tell college students what to do. It is our job to help them make decisions based on facts and not on misperceptions. This strategy is called the Social Norms Approach.

The National Social Norms Resource Center was created at Northern Illinois University to facilitate more interventions and research related to Social Norms Marketing. Now existing at the University of Virginia under a new name, the National Social Norms Institute works with VCU’s Wellness Resource Center in a grant-funded project to create, conduct, and evaluate the social norms marketing campaign at VCU. For more information about the theory and research related to true numbers and social norms, check out www.socialnorms.org. A summary of changes at VCU over time from 2002 through the present is also available at that site.

What research instrument does VCU use to collect the True Numbers?

VCU uses a survey tool called the National College Health Assessment (NCHA) to collect our numbers. The NCHA was developed by the American College Health Association (ACHA) and an interdisciplinary team of college health professionals. The instrument contains approximately 300 questions that assess health, including questions on protective behaviors (aka "strategies") and risk. The survey assesses a wide variety of health issues including injury prevention, personal safety and violence, alcohol/tobacco/other drug use, sexual health, weight/nutrition/exercise, physical health, mental health, and how academics are impacted by health issues. The survey also assesses perceived norms about certain behaviors.

To learn about the reliability and validity of the National College Health Assessment (NCHA), please read information provided at www.acha-ncha.org.

How does VCU get its True Numbers?

Annually since 2002, VCU has been conducting random campus-wide surveys of VCU students. Between 2002 and 2007, the survey was collected using scantrons in randomly selected, undergraduate classes. This process was both optional and anonymous and our response rate was generally 95% or higher.

Since 2008, the survey methodology and instrument have changed. We continue to collect the data every spring, but currently use the updated, online ACHA NCHA II instrument. In addition, we are now random sampling graduate students as well. At the beginning of each spring semester, we obtain a list of all the email addresses for students enrolled in VCU spring classes. The list is sent to ACHA who then draws a random sample. One of every six students is randomly selected to participate.

The survey is both optional and confidential. Students are assured that no one at VCU or ACHA can connect an individual student to their survey responses. A third party vendor creates a secure site that protects student data. Participants are offered a chance to win raffle prizes for their participation. Over the past several years, our response rate has been 37%, which is fairly high for online surveys. Each year, our sample demographics are fairly close to the VCU student population enrollment demographics.

We always try to be accurate when we create media about our data and we include if the results are from undergraduates, graduates or both. This study has been approved by the VCU Office of Institutional Research Board. For more information feel free to contact at us The Wellness Resource Center.

How true is True?
(Translation: Do students lie on surveys?)

Good question. We worry about that, too. Every year, a handful of surveys (less than a few dozen) are deleted from the data set for silly or bogus answers. For example, a student who responds that he is 99 years old having sex 69 times per day and drinking 100 drinks in a sitting is not included in the data set.

While no one can be certain about the accuracy of any survey data, studies about the validity of self-reported data suggest that if the behavior is legal and if the subjects feel secure that their responses are anonymous or confidential, most tell the truth.

The VCU students with whom we have discussed this issue say they "tell it like it is." Several students have noted: "Heck, it's too much work to lie on surveys anyway; it's just easier to tell the truth." Besides, the responses for several large national data sets are consistent with VCU’s True Numbers.

What finally convinced us that our “true numbers” were accurate was our clicker session responses. Students consistently tell us they feel safe using our anonymous clicker systems and that they will tell the truth. Then when we ask health behavior questions using clickers, we get almost exactly the same numbers as we do with the campus-wide, random online NCHA II survey. That’s called triangulating the data….it made us do the happy dance and feel like our true numbers are true!

Is sharing the True Numbers making a difference?

It’s really hard to know for sure what makes a difference. However, what we do know is that students like and read our media. Every semester we conduct market saturation research, using both mall intercept surveys and clicker surveys, that demonstrate that over 90% of students have seen our message. It’s hard to know for sure if a change in behavior is related to exposure to healthy norms and strategies.

The National Social Norms Institute has helped us run an analysis on the subgroup of our student population that should theoretically be impacted by the media. Analysis of trends from 2002 to 2009 using VCU NCHA data show a decrease in misperceptions about alcohol use and a reduction in high risk drinking among our undergraduate students. While the pattern in consumption varies somewhat from year to year, on average, it drops during most of the years!

In 2010, The Well published data collected from a sample of VCU freshmen in clicker sessions. Those findings convinced us that spreading the truth about health by posters and clickers is worth our time and effort. (link to PDF of ACHA Action News Publication).

If you have additional questions about the NCHA survey at VCU, the validity of self-reported data, or our marketing campaign, we encourage you to contact the primary investigator for "VCU Students Are Healthier Than You Think!" Social Norms Project:
Linda Hancock, FNP, PhD
804-828-7815