Personalized Booster Feedback After Alcohol Health Education
Phase: PHASE1
Conditions: College Student Drinking
Sponsor: Abby Braitman

 
 
 
Study Protocol 
 
 
Personalized Booster Feedback After Alcohol Health Education 
 
NCT03440476 
 
6/23/2022 
 
 

Principal Investigator: 
 
 
 
 
Abby L. Braitman, Ph.D. 
 
Description and Purpose of the Project 
Heavy episodic alcohol use within the college student population is widespread, creating 
problems for student drinkers, their peers, and their institutions. Negative consequences from 
heavy alcohol use can be mild (e.g., hangovers, missed classes), to severe (e.g., assault, even 
death). Although online interventions targeting college student drinking reduce alcohol 
consumption and associated problems, they are not as effective as in-person interventions. 
Online interventions are cost-effective, offer privacy, reduce stigma, and may reach individuals 
who would otherwise not receive treatment. In a recently completed randomized, controlled trial, 
an emailed booster with personalized feedback improved the efficacy of a popular online 
intervention (Braitman & Henson, 2016). Although promising, the booster incorporated in the 
study needs further empirical refinement.  
The current project seeks to build on past progress by further developing and refining the 
booster. In particular, one aspect missing from online interventions is a connection with a person 
invested in improving the student’s outcomes. The current study aims to generate a personal 
connection for online interventions through a follow-up booster emailed by a member of the 
research staff. Outcomes will be compared for participants who receive a follow-up booster with 
similar content, but is clearly automatically generated and not from any particular individual.  
There are 3 conditions: all participants receive the initial online intervention targeting 
college drinking. Condition 1 (the control group) receives an email with a reminder to complete 
the follow-up surveys, but no feedback (i.e., no booster). Condition 2 receives an emailed 
booster with normative feedback plus protective strategies feedback, clearly automatically 
generated. Condition 3 receives an emailed booster with normative feedback plus protective 
strategies feedback, from a member of the research staff. The booster content alone 
(automatically generated) may be efficacious, or the additional personal connection may enhance 
the effect.  
 
Primary Aims 
The aim of the current study is to examine if personal contact enhances the tailored 
feedback received via booster email.  
 
Participants 
 
Eligible participants must be 1) a current college student at the sponsor institution at the 
time of enrollment; 2) between the ages of 18 and 24; and 3) consumed at least one standard 
drink of alcohol in the past 2 weeks. Power analyses were conducted using Monte Carlo 
simulation methods within Mplus (version 5.21, Muthén & Muthén). Effect sizes, variance, and 
covariances used were based on data from a preliminary study with similar eligibility criteria 
using the same booster content (Braitman & Henson, 2016). We estimated a retention rate of 
76%, the average reported in a meta-analysis of RCTs assessing alcohol interventions for first-
year college students (Scott-Sheldon et al., 2014). Monte Carlo simulation methods indicated 
that for the effect size expected (b = 6.57, β = 0.537) and for the expected 24% attrition, a sample 
size of N = 180 total students should yield power = .813 to detect the booster effects.   
 
Recruitment Procedure 

Recruitment uses two methods. 1) An advertisement is placed in the Announcement 
system at the host institution, which includes a link to a screener survey.  2) An email describing 
the study is sent to undergraduate students who meet the age eligibility criteria (18-24 years old) 
at the sponsoring institution who attend classes on the main campus of the sponsoring institution, 
which also includes a link to a screener survey. In addition to the assessing eligibility criteria 
(age, student status, and alcohol consumed) additional irrelevant questions are included in the 
screener survey to discourage ineligible participants from re-taking the screener survey with 
different answers. Students who screen as eligible are invited to provide their contact information 
(name, email, and phone number), and to schedule their participation in the baseline session via 
Calendly).  
 
Study Procedure 
Emerging adult college drinkers are recruited as described above. After completing the 
screener to verify eligibility, participants schedule their baseline session. After completing 
baseline, they are invited to complete two follow-up surveys 1 and 3 months after their baseline 
session. Participants receive a $20 gift card for their participation (from Amazon or Target) for 
baseline participation. Additionally, participants receive $10 for each completed follow-up 
survey (for the 1-, 3-month assessments). As an additional incentive, participants who complete 
all assessments are given a $10 bonus (yielding $50 total for the study).  
 
Baseline: Upon arrival at the research lab, participants are provided with the informed 
consent document, and have the opportunity to ask questions. After consenting to participate, 
they are directed to one of the computers in the lab. Because data are collected in a computer lab 
setting, each computer has a privacy partition (behind and beside the monitor). This is to 
minimize the possibility of participants viewing each other’s screens. Additionally, participants 
are provided with headphones to minimize disruption from the other computers. All participants 
complete a computerized survey at the beginning of their first appointment that assesses alcohol 
use, alcohol-related problems, protective behavioral strategies for drinking and their perceived 
effectiveness, motives and expectancies for alcohol use, anonymized social network 
characteristics, context of their most recent drinking occasion, marijuana and tobacco use, and 
demographics measures. Upon beginning the survey, participants are randomly assigned within 
the survey system to one of the three study conditions: neutral email (no feedback), auto-
generated booster email (feedback, no warmth), warm booster email (feedback written by a 
person using warm, personable language). After completing the initial assessment, participants 
are then directed to navigate through the eCHECKUP TO GO for Alcohol program (San Diego 
State University Research Foundation, 2018) until it is completed (approximately 20-30 
minutes).  
 
Follow up assessments:  Approximately one and three months after the initial assessment, 
researchers send each participant an email reminding them to complete the follow-up assessment 
in exchange for payment. This email includes a link to an online follow-up survey that assesses 
alcohol use, related problems, protective behavioral strategies for drinking and their perceived 
effectiveness, anonymized social network characteristics, context of their most recent drinking 
occasion, and marijuana and tobacco use.  
 
Boosters:  Approximately two weeks after the intervention, all participants receive an 
additional email from the researcher. Information in the emails for the experimental booster 
groups serve as a booster to the original intervention. Baseline data are used to provide students 
with normative information (e.g., typical drinking among ODU students who are male/female 

depending on the gender of the recipient), and reminders of protective behavioral strategies they 
can use to reduce drinking-related harm. In the auto-generated booster email condition, the 
feedback is delivered neutrally: “Hello, This feedback has been automatically generated for 
Carlton based on your answers to the online survey you completed in the research lab for the 
Project ‘Personalized Booster Feedback after Alcohol Health Education’”), whereas in the warm 
booster email  condition, the feedback is delivered by a person using warm, personable language 
(i.e., Dear Carlton, My name is Edward and I’m your personal research coordinator for the 
Project ‘Personalized Booster Feedback after Alcohol Health Education’. I track your responses 
over the course of the study, and I’m writing to give you feedback about your answers to the 
online survey you completed in the research lab”). Participants in the control condition receive 
an email with no feedback.  
 
Measures 
The same measures are included in baseline and the follow-up surveys: 
Participants’ alcohol use is assessed using a modified version of the Daily Drinking 
Questionnaire for the past 30 days (Collins et al., 1985). Additionally, participants describe 
specific aspects regarding their drinking in the past 30 days (e.g., highest consumption in a single 
day). Descriptive Norms are assessed by modifying the DDQ to reflect their expectations for 
typical male students at the same institution, typical female students at the same institution, and 
close friends. Injunctive Norms are assessed using 10 items (Carey et al., 2010). Alcohol-related 
problems are assessed using the 48-item Young Adult Alcohol Consequences Questionnaire 
(YAACQ; Read et al., 2006), modified to assess the past 30 days rather than the past year. 
Protective behavioral strategy (PBS) use is assessed using Sugarman and Carey’s (2007) 
Strategy Questionnaire (SQ). Perceived effectiveness of PBS is assessed by modifying the 
instructions and response scale for Sugarman and Carey’s (2007) measure to assess how 
effective participants perceive each strategy to be. Importance of PBS use for all people and self 
are assessed with 10 items created by the researcher. Alcohol expectancies are assessed using 
the Comprehensive Effects of Alcohol questionnaire (CEOA; Fromme et al., 1993). Motives for 
alcohol use are assessed using the Drinking Motives Questionnaire (DMQ; Cooper, 1994). 
Alcohol beliefs about how salient alcohol use is to college life are assessed using the College 
Life Alcohol Salience Scale (CLASS; Osberg et al., 2010). Social network and affiliated 
characteristics are assessed using the adapted version (DeMartini et al., 2013) of the Brief 
Important People Interview (BIPI; Zywiak et al., 2002). Participants are asked to report 
characteristics and context for their most recent drinking occasion. This assessment is a 
collection of items mostly created by the researcher, but incorporates a modified version of the 
Alcohol Offers scale (Read et al., 2005), and a truncated, occasion-specific version of drinking 
motives (Cooper, 1994). Marijuana use is assessed similar to prior research (e.g., Collins et al., 
2014), and tobacco use is assessed using items created by the researcher. Demographics and 
general information are collected during the initial assessment only; participants report their 
age, race, sex, Greek affiliation (i.e., membership in fraternities or sororities), GPA, class 
standing, athletic status student status (full- versus part-time), residential status, relationship 
status, sexual identity, height, and weight (for blood alcohol content calculations).  
 
 

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