How many cans of beer do most VCU students drink over the course of a night out partying?
Do people really smoke as much as seen on TV?
These are the questions the Office of Health Promotion aims to answer with its “What’s Your Strategy?” campaign. So far, about 800 students have electronically submitted their entry forms in a contest that will win one of them a 30-gigabyte video iPod and present some potentially life-saving knowledge.
“The purpose of the raffle was to draw students to our Web site to find out the true statistics – VCU students are healthier than you think,” said Amanda Wattenmaker, a health educator in the Office of Health Promotion, a division of University Student Health Services. The campaign, she said, wants students to realize that self-destruction is not the way to have a good time.
“If you know the true fact that VCU students are healthier than you think, then you are eligible to win an iPod,” Wattenmaker said.
Students will have to read the statistics and answer a survey. The statistical data used in the “True Numbers” survey are derived from The National College Health Assessment, which is created by the American College Health Association. The NCHA is a 300-page multiple-choice booklet surveying health habits of college students. According to the NCHA Web site, the survey has been tailored with constructs that help guarantee reliability and validity, and make it easy for researchers to throw out misleading or false data.
“We’d like the emphasis to be numbers,” Wattenmaker said. “Students will see that (statistic). They type it in, so they see it twice.”
Not just seeing the fact, but writing it over again will cause students to remember it, she added. The purpose of the activity is for every entrant to take something away from the contest even if they entered expecting nothing.
According to a 2004 news post on the Office of Health Promotion Web site, if a random 10 people were to sit at a table with a total of 10 beers on it, one person would drink seven,