Do you want to learn more about the population you work with?
Many college health professionals want to better understand the attitudes and behaviors of the students they work with, so they can design effective interventions and social marketing campaigns. There are a huge number of existing questionnaires that are designed to measure all kinds of interesting things, like the Teen Addiction Severity Index and the Alcohol Abstinence Self-Efficacy Scale. But how do we find an existing questionnaire that can gather the data we are interested in?
The Substance Use Screening and Assessment Instruments, provided by the University of Washington’s Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute, is a great place to start. There are a large number of instruments listed, including those that can measure social norms variables. A great feature of this database is that instruments with proven validity and reliability are marked with a gold star. You can even search for instruments that mention terms like “perception” and “norms”!
