Safe Rides Program Effectiveness, 1

Safe Rides Program Effectiveness, 1

A MARKETING RESEARCH STUDY TO DETERMINE HOW EFFECTIVE

THE “SAFE RIDES” PROGRAM IS IN PREVENTING STUDENTS

FROM DRIVING UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF ALCOHOL

Prepared for:

Earl Patria, Interim Director of Campus Safety

By:

Mikie Connor

Nick Fulciniti

Chris Giampietro

Andrew Predzimirski

Dennis White

A course paper presented to Programs of Business Administration

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the

Bachelor of Science Degree

Marketing Research Course

Franklin Pierce University

Fall 2012

Table of Contents

Executive Summary...... 4

Introduction...... 4

Background Information of the Organization Under Study...... 4

Nature of the Problem...... 5

Purpose of the Project...... 5

Problem Statement...... 6

Research Objectives...... 6

Literature Review...... 6

College-Aged use of Transportation...... 6

Drinking Trends among College Students...... 8

Legal Distinction...... 9

Impaired Driving among College Students...... 11

Individual and Community-Level Approaches...... 12

Methodology and Procedures...... 14

Problem Identification...... 14

Development of Survey...... 14

Definition of Population...... 14

Sample Size...... 14

Data Collection Method...... 15

Assumptions...... 15

Limitations...... 15

Results...... 16

Question 1...... 16

Question 2...... 16

Question 3...... 16

Question 4...... 18

Question 5...... 18

Question 6...... 18

Question 7...... 19

Question 8...... 19

Question 9...... 19

Question 10...... 20

Question 11...... 20

Question 12...... 20

Question 13...... 20

Cross-Tabulation 1...... 20

Cross-Tabulation 2...... 21

Cross-Tabulation 3...... 22

Discussion, Conclusions, and Recommendations...... 22

Discussion...... 22

Conclusions...... 23

Recommendations...... 24

References...... 27

Appendixes...... 29

Appendix A: Safe Rides Questionnaire...... 29

Appendix B: Question 1...... 31

Appendix C: Question 2...... 31

Appendix D: Question 3...... 32

Appendix E: Question 4...... 33

Appendix F: Question 5...... 33

Appendix G: Question 6...... 34

Appendix H: Question 7...... 34

Appendix I: Question 8...... 35

Appendix J: Question 9...... 35

Appendix K: Question 10...... 36

Appendix L: Question 11...... 36

Appendix M: Question 12...... 37

Appendix N: Question 13...... 37

Appendix O: Cross-Tabulation 1...... 38

Appendix P: Cross-Tabulation 2...... 38

Appendix Q: Cross-Tabulation 3...... 39

Executive Summary

Driving under the influence of alcohol is an extremely dangerous and prevalent danger to society, especially within the setting of campus colleges. Institutions must take responsibility for the transportation safety of its students, and should therefore offer some sort of program that provides them with a safe and convenient method of getting students to and from their campus destinations during the most active partying hours. Franklin Pierce University addresses this need through their Safe Rides program, which is a free shuttle service sponsored by the Student Government Association that runs Fridays and Saturdays from 10pm to 2am. The marketing research team conducted research regarding the effectiveness of this program in preventing students from driving under the influence of alcohol on campus during the weekend. This research was conducted through the surveying of 172 Franklin Pierce students, using a questionnaire created by the researchers. This questionnaire was designed to directly explore the level of student intoxication and frequency of intoxicated driving on an average weekend, determine awareness and attitudes towards the Safe Rides program, and to gain constructive criticism on how it could be improved from a client's perspective.

Introduction

Background Information of the Organization under Study

Franklin Pierce University is a small, private, regionally accredited liberal arts university

that focuses on individual student attention and high-quality instruction. The University consists of the College at Rindge and the College of Graduate & Professional Studies. Degrees are offered through the doctoral level. The institutional mission focuses on preparing citizens and leaders for a new century, promoting significant contributions to their professions and communities, whether their aspirations are local or global.

The college has 1,400 undergraduate students and 391 employees. The average

class size is 16 students, boasting a student to staff ratio of 16:1. This school holds two 14

week semesters, as well as two 4 week summer sessions. The yearly tuition and fees

for 2011-2012 cost $41,000 according to Hoover’s online database, and the school has an annual income of over $69 million.

Nature of the Problem

The Franklin Pierce University campus has both an active drinking and party community on weekends, where students, both of legal drinking age and underage, often partake in moderate to heavy alcohol consumption. With this drinking comes the issue of transportation, and how students who have been drinking will go about safely returning or getting to their destination if it is not in walking distance. In order to prevent these students from making the dangerous albeit frequent choice to either drive under the influence or be driven by an impaired driver, institutions must take responsibility for the weekend activities that occur on their campus. They can do this by assisting student transportation with a transportation program designed to escort students who have been drinking to their destinations safely.

Franklin Pierce's answer to this issue is the implementation of the Safe Rides program, described by the institution as an escort “available any time a student feels more comfortable having an officer accompany him or her back to a dorm room or vehicle” (Department of Campus Safety and Transportation, 2012). The program is offered to students free of charge as an effort to encourage them not to drive impaired instead. The program is operated by the University's Department of Campus Security.

Purpose of the Project

The purpose of this study is to gauge the effectiveness of Franklin Pierce's Safe Rides program in the prevention of drunk driving. By gathering opinions and attitudes of students on campus regarding the program by a thorough questionnaire, a true profile of its effectiveness can be formed from the perspective of those it was designed for. For example, an article of the Franklin Pierce Exchange observed that the program is lacking, because it “does not drive [students] to local bars in order to alleviate the risk of driving under the influence” (¶1). If it was found through this study's research that students desire a similar feature, the application of that information could “help prevent Franklin Pierce students from being entered into statistics like the 1,131 young adults who died in alcohol related crashes in 2003.” The information gathered from students could be used to improve or restructure aspects of the Safe Rides program, making it more effective and more of a realistic transportation option for students.

Problem Statement

Research is necessary to determine whether the Franklin Pierce University Safe Rides program is effective in preventing driving under the influence.

Research Objectives

1.Assess the current literature related to college-age intoxicated driving, and transportation programs designed to ensure safety.

2.Identify student opinions on the effectiveness of the current Safe Rides program offered on campus.

3.Assess the transportation needs of Franklin Pierce University students who consume alcohol on the weekends.

4.Determine student awareness of the program on campus.

Literature Review

College-Aged Use of Transportation
No college-aged student wants to be confined to their college campus; they desire various means of transportation to traverse the campus as well as surrounding cities. Owning a car is obviously one expensive form of transportation, however, the need for college-funded transportation is not limited to students who lack a vehicle of their own. Other reasons students may prefer this method of transportation is saving on fuel purchases, or reducing their carbon footprint. Although taxis are available near most campuses, they do not represent a financially practical method of transportation for college students. For these reasons, most institutions run shuttles or vans on campus for getting students to and from nearby destinations on and off campus.
Salve Regina University, located in Newport, Rhode Island, is a great example of an institution with a well-rounded student transportation program. Salve always has two shuttles running simultaneously for their students. One shuttle operates to escort students around campus, while the other takes students to four specific locations in the nearby city of Newport and returns to campus. These shuttles run every day of the week, and operate until 1:00am to help cater to student outside of class-time as well (Parking and Transportation, n.d.).
Utilizing surrounding public transportation sources is an efficient method for schools to provide off-campus rides without financing their own transportation program, as well as to spread out the range of available stops for preexisting transportation programs. Salve Regina has collaborated with the RIPTA (Rhode Island Public Transit Authority) to provide free transportation through the entire city of Newport, Providence, and Kingston to its students. Students can ride any of the trolleys, subways, and buses by showing a valid Salve ID card which grants completely free access. Trinity College of Connecticut provides a similar program, which provides students with a free U-PASS card on the first day of school that grants access to all Hartford buses and subways (Transportation, n.d.).
In this day and age colleges must step up to meet the roaming needs of students by supporting programs which will provide student transportation at night. By offering an evening shuttle service on campus, students are to given a safe alternative for getting back to their dorms rather than choosing to drive impaired or be driven by someone under the influence. Trinity College has a high rate of crime within its city, Hartford, CT. Their need for safe and dependable student transportation is clearly more prevalent than Salve Regina’s, due to the nature of the institution location and crime rate. Salve Regina University's location on the other hand, Newport, Rhode Island, boasts a very low crime rate. Trinity College’s campus safety officers will pick anyone up on campus to drive them to their dorm or classes at night to insure a safe trip without walking in the dark alone.
Aside from shuttles, Trinity College has also started utilizing an outside source of transportation for students called Zipcar. This program allows students to rent a designated Zipcar vehicle by the hour or by the day, and park it conveniently on campus. This service targets the need for students to reach off-campus destinations while evading the large financial burden of owning a car.

Drinking Trends among College Students

Alcohol use is a continuing problem on most college campuses, where nearly 73% of the students drink at least occasionally, according to the Core Institute, the United States largest national statistics database on alcohol and drug use by college students. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control figures for 2010, one in four young adults, ages 18-34, binge drink. Binge drinking occurs when alcoholic beverages are consumed in excess, with the primary intention of becoming intoxicated in a short period of time. It is popular with social drinking since it is often done in groups. For example, college students participate in social binge drinking. According to the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study (CAS), students more likely to binge drink are male, white, under 24 years of age, involved in athletics and residents of a fraternity or sorority. If they were also binge drinkers in high school, they were three times more likely to binge drink in college.
Students who binge drink three or more times in a 2-week period consume very large quantities of alcohol (College drinking, 2010). The 1997 College Alcohol Study found that this group (20.9 percent of students) consumed a median of 14.5 drinks per week and accounted for 68 percent of all the alcohol consumed by college students.
Being associated with certain groups, especially in the college setting, influences young adults and their decision to engage in binge drinking. Students exposed to or involved in Greek life are more prone to heavy drinking as well as college athletes (College drinking, 2010). In addition to identifying these groups, it is understood that student drinkers choose to engage in this behavior as a means of fitting in with what is considered a social norm. Students are confronted with social pressures involving binge drinking and if ignored, risk being socially isolated from others. This reality examines the psychological workings associated with continued binge drinking at colleges and universities across the United States. Along with drinking being portrayed as an individual’s choice, drinking in the college setting can also be portrayed as a collaborative choice involving many students. Annual rankings of America’s top party schools are an unsuspecting factor that contributes to continued binge drinking among campuses (A snapshot, 2010). Students are proud of their university’s partying reputation, and are therefore fueled by competition to out-drink rival party schools. A sense of identity is brought to each university holding this label and gives further insight as to why continued alcohol consumption thrives among hundreds of universities.

Legal Distinction

The laws of driving under the influence have changed massively over the recent years. All fifty states in the U.S. now include two separate offenses when it comes to driving under the influence of alcohol. The first offense, which has been around for ages, is known as the DUI or “driving under the influence.” Other offenses that fall under this category are classified as a DWI, or “driving while intoxicated/impaired,” and OWI, or “operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated/impaired.” In order to be classified as one of these three offenses, the police officer must observe either strange driving behavior, slurred speech, or the failure of a roadside sobriety test. The second type of offense is known as “illegal per se.” This is when the driver is operating a motor vehicle with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of at least 0.08% g/dL. Drivers are considered to be alcohol-impaired and unable to operate a motor vehicle when their BAC is 0.08% g/dL or higher, and it has been illegal to drive with this BAC in all fifty states since 2002 (Drunk Driving Statistics, 2011).

The number of DUIs and DWIs will vary from year to year, but the number of people arrested for drunk driving has seemed to reach a similar average over previous years. In 2002 the amount of people arrested nationally for drunk driving amounted to 1,461,746 people. In 2007 around 1,427,494 people were arrested nationally for drunk driving. This amounts to approximately a 35,000 person difference which seems substantial, but when considering the nation as a whole this is a minor distinction. Driving under the influence is clearly a problem in the United States, and puts not only oneself at risk but others as well. It can often lead to the cause or involvement of accidents, injuries, and deaths. In 2002, the number of national fatal accidents was just under 12,000 where at least one driver had a BAC of .8% or higher. 13,472 people were also killed in accidents when at least one driver had a BAC of .8% or higher. This BAC is not to be confused with .08% however, where a driver is officially considered impaired. These numbers, when compared to 2007 statistics, don't represent much of a disparity. In 2007 there were 11,780 fatal accidents nationally where at least one driver had a BAC of .8% or higher, and 13,041 people were killed nationally in accidents where at least one driver had a BAC of .8% or higher. In 2002 around 2,300 people were killed nationally in accidents where at least one driver had a BAC between .01% and .07%, both readings under the limits of being an officially impaired driver. In 2007 just under 2,500 people were killed nationally in accidents where at least and driver had a BAC between .01% and .07% (Drunk Driving Statistics - Accidents & Deaths, 2012). Although seemingly high, readers should consider how many more accidents and deaths there could have been out of the estimated 1.5 million people driving under the influence if the police hadn’t arrested them under an impaired driving offense.

Impaired Driving among College Students

There is no doubt that drinking and driving poses a great risk to public health. On a college campus, driving while intoxicated or under the influence of other substances can easily be considered one of the biggest threats to the safety of everybody within the community. A study featured in the May 2nd 2011 edition of Alcoholism & Drug Abuse Weekly shows how frequently students endanger their own lives as well as the lives of others by driving under the influence. Out of the number of students examined, 63 percent of students 21 years old admitted that they have driven after drinking within the past 12 months, along with 64 percent of students at the age of 22. The same study showed that 25 percent of the students at the age of 21 said they have driven while intoxicated, as did 22 percent of the students who were 22 years of age. Also, 50 percent of the 22 year-olds stated that they have been driven by an intoxicated driver, as well as 49 percent of the students who were 21 (Beck, 2010).
These figures show that driving under the influence is a dangerous and prevalent issue on college campuses throughout the United States. The large number of respondents who had reported that they willingly rode with an intoxicated driver suggests that college students do not seem to seem to consider the risks associated with driving under the influence of alcohol or other substances.
The consumption of alcohol by underage students at college is a common occurrence. Although, students can legally consume alcohol once 21, it does not mean that they will do so in a responsible or safe manner. To support this claim, studies have shown that many young adults who are at or above the legal drinking age engage in driving under the influence. Alcohol-related traffic risks are quite common among college students, and take a significant upturn when students become of the legal drinking age—presenting the need for adequate hazard prevention by the institution (Beck, 2010). This study is not alone in finding that college students who are of the legal drinking age engage in this type of behavior more-so than underage students who consume alcohol. An article that appeared in US News stated, “lowering the drinking age to 18 would most likely result in a surge of alcohol-related traffic incidents” (1 in 5 College Students, 2010). This finding shows that there is no reason to believe that when students reach legal drinking age they will begin choosing to refrain from driving under the influence.
Individual and Community-Level Approaches
It is fairly well-known that a good deal of drinking occurs on college campuses during weekends, which is why the issue of transportation and the prevention of drunk driving is one that demands attention. Studies have found that 39% of students have reported driving while intoxicated, and 50% reported drinking while in a car. Programs have been developed by institutions to address the harmful effects of driving under the influence on both individual and community levels, also known as Tier 1 and Tier 2. It was found that strategies aimed at the individual, or Tier 1 strategies, have the strongest evidence of efficacy. These approaches can include brief interventions, cognitive-behavioral interventions, and expectancy challenge. Expectancy challenge occurs when it is made evident to a college student that negative outcomes rather than positive ones are linked to heavy alcohol consumption, which will in theory make those students less likely to engage in those behaviors. Tier 2 strategies, addressing the issue on a community level, have yet to be proven effective among college students and are also harder to accomplish. These strategies can include adjustments to the minimum drinking age, the price of alcoholic beverages, the density of alcohol sale outlets, and having retailers promote responsible beverage service. An example of a community effort was when the Massachusetts Saving Lives program targeted drunk driving by implementing drunk-driving checkpoints, alcohol-free prom nights, beer keg registration, and increased surveillance of attempts by minors to buy alcohol. Results were stellar, and “the intervention reduced alcohol involved crashes by more than 10 percent over the comparison communities” (Robert, 2011).
Due to the difficulty of designing and implementing these Tier 2 strategies, the NIAAA (National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism) Task Force stated that, “when an entire campus or community is the unit of intervention, a rigorous research design would require multiple intervention or control conditions as well as comparison campuses, preferably with random assignment to intervention condition” (Robert, 2011). Individual interventions on the other hand are useful for aiding in the recovery of constantly problematic and heavy drinkers, yet it has been found that light and moderate drinkers outnumber the heaviest drinkers to such an extent that they are responsible for the majority of alcohol related problems.
This research is evidence that interventions aimed at risky drinkers should be complemented by universal prevention strategies. A 2009 study that observed the effect of campus-wide interventions showed that its intervention efforts were thwarted by the density of alcohol sale outlets surrounding the campus. Campus environment as well as the community’s responsibility play a large role in the prevention of harmful alcohol consumption and impaired driving as well as efforts on an individual level.