Engaging college students in a substance misuse & sexual health intervention using social marketing principles

The successful recruitment and retention of participants is integral to the translation of research findings. Recruitment begins once you have defined your focus population and identified where and how to reach them (i.e., targeting). Formative evaluation can provide valuable information on recruitment, given the dynamics of different communities and the potential for certain strategies to work better than others with high-risk groups. The preliminary work of engaging the population of interest is essential to successfully attracting and retaining the involvement of populations of interest. The purpose of this paper is to present methods used to engage college students in a multi-level intervention aimed at preventing substance abuse, HIV and STIs.

Andreasen's six principles of social marketing were used to develop intervention activities and engage students in these activities.

A multi-method approach was employed using both survey and focus groups for preliminary feedback, post-event surveys and annual evaluations.

Pamphlets are not enough to attract potential participants because advertisements need to be engaging and employ social networking sites. Students also enjoy playing both on-line and in person games and are quite competitive. Testing for HIV tripled in the first year.

Students became more aware with each subsequent event participation increased over time. Although word of mouth is still very effective in getting students to events, the use of social networking sites greatly improved student participation.