Alcohol Health Education With Personalized Feedback Boosters
Phase: PHASE1
Conditions: College Student Drinking
Sponsor: Abby Braitman

 
 
 
Study Protocol 
 
 
Alcohol Health Education With Personalized Feedback Boosters 
 
NCT03440463 
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, the personalized normative feedback incorporated in the booster has a 
strong history of empirical support, but feedback regarding protective behavioral strategies one 
can use to protect themselves from harm remains relatively unexplored. The current study aims 
to assess the added value of feedback regarding protective behavioral strategies (PBS) to emailed 
boosters containing personalized normative feedback (PNF). Outcomes will be compared for 
participants who receive a follow-up booster with PBS+PNF versus PNF alone.  
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 PNF only. Condition 3 receives an emailed booster with PNF plus PBS feedback. 
The booster PNF content alone may be sufficiently efficacious, or the additional PBS feedback 
may enhance the effect.  
 
Primary Aims 
The aim of the current study is to examine if PBS feedback 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.  
 
Recruitment Procedure 
Recruitment uses two methods. 1) Potential participants enrolled in the sponsoring 
institution’s psychology research pool view a brief study description. If they choose to 
participate, they sign up online for a timeslot to participate in the baseline session. 2) An 
advertisement is placed in the Announcement system at the host institution, which 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 (from Amazon or Target; announcements 
recruitment only) for baseline participation, OR their choice of a $20 payment or credit in their 
course (through SONA) for baseline participation (SONA recruitment only). 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 if monetary compensation was chosen for the baseline protocol, 
and both follow-up surveys were completed).  
 
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), PNF-only 
booster email, or PNF+PBS feedback booster email. 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). In the PNF+PBS feedback booster group, the email 
also contains reminders of protective behavioral strategies they can use to reduce drinking-
related harm (separated by those they reported using, versus those they have not). 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).  
 
 

References 
Braitman, A. L., & Henson, J. M. (2016). Personalized boosters for a computerized intervention 
targeting college drinking: The influence of protective behavioral strategies. Journal of 
American College Health, 64(7), 509-519. 
https://doi.org/10.1080/07448481.2016.1185725 
Carey, K. B., Henson, J. M., Carey, M. P., & Maisto, S. A. (2010). Perceived norms mediate 
effects of a brief motivational intervention for sanctioned college drinkers. Clinical 
Psychology: Science and Practice, 17, 58-71. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-
2850.2009.01194.x 
Collins, R. L., Parks, G. A., & Marlatt, G. A. (1985). Social determinants of alcohol 
consumption: The effects of social interaction and model status on the self-administration 
of alcohol. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 53(2), 189-200. 
https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-006X.53.2.189 
Collins, R. L., Vincent, P. C., Yu, J., Liu, L., & Epstein, L. H. (2014).  A behavioral economic 
approach to assessing demand for marijuana.  Experimental and Clinical 
Psychopharmacology, 22(3), 211-221. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035318 
Cooper, M. L. (1994). Motivations for alcohol use among adolescents: Development and 
validation of a four-factor model. Psychological Assessment, 6(2), 117–
128.  https://doi.org/10.1037/1040-3590.6.2.117 
Core Institute. (2006). American Campuses: 2006 Statistics on Alcohol and Other Drug Use. 
Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University. 
DeMartini, K. S., Prince, M. A., & Carey, K. B. (2013). Identification of trajectories of social 
network composition change and the relationship to alcohol consumption and norms.  
Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 132, 309-315. 
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2013.02.020 
Fromme, K., Stroot, E. A., & Kaplan, D. (1993). Comprehensive effects of alcohol: 
Development and psychometric assessment of a new expectancy questionnaire. 
Psychological Assessment, 5(1), 19-26. https://doi.org/10.1037/1040-3590.5.1.19 
Muthén, L. K., & & Muthén, B. O. (1998-2017). Mplus User’s Guide (8 edition). Muthén & 
Muthén. 
Osberg, T. M., Atkins, L., Buchholz, L., Shirshova, V., Swiantek, A., Whitley, J., et al. (2010). 
Development and validation of the College Life Alcohol Salience Scale: A measure of 
beliefs about the role of alcohol in college life. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 
24(1),1–12. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018197 
Read, J. P., Kahler, C. W., Strong, D. R., & Colder, C. R. (2006). Development and preliminary 
validation of the Young Adult Alcohol Consequences Questionnaire. Journal of Studies 
on Alcohol, 67(1), 169-177. https://doi.org/10.15288/jsa.2006.67.169 
Read, J. P., Wood, M. D., & Capone, C. (2005). A prospective investigation of relations between 
social influences and alcohol involvement during the transition into college. Journal of 
Studies on Alcohol, 66, 23–34. https://doi.org/10.15288/jsa.2005.66.23 
San Diego State University Research Foundation. (2018). eCHECKUP TO GO [Online 
program]. http://www.echeckuptogo.com/programs/alcohol  
Scott-Sheldon, L. A. J., Carey, K. B., Elliott, J. C., & Garey, L., & Carey, M P. (2014). Efficacy 
of alcohol interventions for first-year college students: A meta-analytic review of 
randomized controlled trials. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 82(2), 177-
188. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035192 

Sugarman, D. E., & Carey, K. B. (2007). The relationship between drinking control strategies 
and college student alcohol use. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 21(3), 338-345. 
https://doi.org/10.1037/0893-164x.21.3.338 
Zwyiak, W. H., & Longabaugh, R. (2002). The Brief Important People Interview Manual. Center 
for Alcohol and Addiction Studies, Providence, RI.