Making Sense of Bystander Intervention: Student Explanations of Other's Risk and Responsibility

• In Event: Alcohol, Diet, Behavior Change: High-Density Panel in Public Health Communication

Abstract

One approach to addressing problems of excessive drinking on college campuses is to encourage students to intervene when they see others engaged in risky behavior. This approach, referred to as bystander intervention, has been shown to have the potential to increase student awareness of how they can help others and to have the potential to decrease problem behavior (Banyard, Moynihan & Plante, 2004). Prior research indicates that a number of factors influence students’ willingness to intervene and their ability to do so effectively (Levine & Crowther, 2008; White & Malkowski, 2014). However, to fully understand bystander intervention processes, we need to know how students make sense of others’ drinking behavior, how they assess the risk others may face from drinking excessively, and what they understand intervention to entail. We used focus group analyses to identify the frames and discourses students draw on as they make sense of other student's risk and responsibility around excessive drinking.

Authors

• Cindy H. White, U of Colorado

• Jennifer Malkowski, U of Colorado - Boulder