Hobart and William Smith Colleges

3 March 2003 Perkins Letter Published in American Sociological Association Newsletter

H. Wesley Perkins, professor of sociology, wrote a letter in response to Binge Drinking Prevention Research published in the Feb. 2003 Footnotes, the newsletter of the American Sociological Association. His letter is in response to the letter by Henry Wechsler and Toben F. Nelson, of the Harvard School of Public Health. Perkins wrote, Henry Wechslers and Toben Nelsons response to the December 2002 Footnotes article on sociological approaches to curbing campus drinking simply repeats Wechslers now familiar but unsubstantiated criticism of social norms research and interventions. I agree that high-risk drinking in college is a serious problem and that the important question is how to reduce it based on theory, measurement, and dataprecisely the question addressed by the social norms approach. His full letter is available here.