Stimulantia-factcheck
“'Veel studenten slikken pillen om te blokken.' Maar klopt dat beeld wel?”
University of Antwerp social norms campaign (Dec 2022 - Apr 2023) on TikTok, Facebook and Instagram that told students that more than 9 in 10 of their peers never take prescription stimulants to study, to correct the belief that 'study pills' are common.
- Years
- 2022–2023
- Country
- Belgium
- Budget
- About EUR 1,280 in paid social media (TikTok EUR 457, Meta about EUR 823), from the University of Antwerp communication department's own budget (Derickx 2025).
- Topic
- Drugs
- Asks people to
- Never start
- Strategy
- Social norms
- Channel
- Social (organic)Social (paid)Website
- Audience
- Young adultsUniversity of Antwerp students; Ghent University students were the comparison group.
Evidence
Quasi-experimentalNo effect
Difference-in-differences against Ghent University: Antwerp students' estimates of peers' nonmedical use of prescription stimulants for study fell relative to controls (estimate -3.79, P<.0001), but there was no effect on their own use (OR 1.10, 95% CI 0.87-1.39). 18.7% of the intervention group had seen the campaign, mostly on Facebook (64.0%) and Instagram (53.3%); only 3.1% saw it on TikTok, which took 35.7% of the budget (Derickx 2025).
Sponsor (who paid)
- University of Antwerp Academic, creator, funder and evaluator
- City of Antwerp (Stad Antwerpen) Foreign government, research partner
- VAD (Flemish expertise centre on alcohol and other drugs) NGO, partner (survey data)
Credits (who made it)
Not recorded yet.
Related campaigns
- Alcoholfacts 2022–2023
Sources
- Derickx K, van Roozendaal H, Ponnet K et al. Outcome and process evaluation of a social norms approach intervention on nonmedical use of prescription stimulants for study performance among Flemish university students: a quasi-experimental study. Arch Public Health 2025 evaluation · 2025 · DOI 10.1186/s13690-025-01603-6 · PMID 40481595
- 'Veel studenten slikken pillen om te blokken.' Stimulantia - Factcheck (University of Antwerp campaign page, Wayback copy) archive
Research notes
Drafted by Claude (Claude Code) on 2026-10-28 for #130 from the PubMed study and web sources listed; unreviewed, including the cardSummary. Name from the campaign page ('Stimulantia-factcheck is een op het social norm approach gebaseerde interventie'); the study abstract names only the 'Head in the Clouds?' (In hogere sferen?) survey its figures come from, which is VAD's four-yearly student survey, not the campaign. Dates per a summary of the full text: 14 Dec 2022 - 20 Jan 2023, boost 31 Mar - 16 Apr 2023. Campaign figures (93% never used; over 95% not in the past 12 months) come from 1,941 Antwerp students in the 2021 survey. Budget lines were read from a summary of the full text and need checking. targetBehavior 'prevent-initiation' is a judgement: the campaign aimed to reduce nonmedical use among students who mostly never used.
Record cases/be-antwerp-stimulantia-factcheck.json, updated 2026-10-28· Link to this campaign