Substance Use Risk Education (SURE) Project
Condition: Alcohol Abuse; Alcohol Drinking
MeSH terms: Alcoholism; Alcohol Drinking
Study type: Interventional
Phase: Phase 2

Summary: 
      This project is designed to compare college drinking interventions on outcomes and
      cost-effectiveness. We plan to recruit 700 students with residence hall alcohol violations to
      participate in a randomized study to evaluate 3 brief interventions: in-person brief
      motivational intervention, Alcohol 101plus (an interactive CD-ROM program), and AlcoholEdu (a
      Web-based tutorial). Participants will be followed over 12 months to determine changes in
      alcohol consumption and related problems. We will also explore which participants might
      respond better to one intervention vs the others.
    

Detailed description: 
      Many college students engage in heavy episodic drinking, a pattern that increases risks of
      undesired academic, social, health, and legal consequences. Fortunately, brief motivational
      interventions - when administered during face-to-face sessions by a trained counselor - can
      help students to reduce their heavy drinking and related consequences. However, use of such
      counselor-administered interventions on college campuses remains infrequent; instead,
      administrators rely on computerized brief interventions because they can be administered with
      fewer staff at lower cost. Two computer-administered interventions (AlcoholEdu and Alcohol
      101 Plus) are used by more than 1,000 colleges and universities nationwide, even though these
      interventions have not been evaluated in controlled studies. Despite the magnitude of the
      college-drinking problem, no data have addressed the differential efficacy (or
      cost-effectiveness) of the computer-administered versus counselor-administered brief
      motivational interventions. Thus, the primary purpose of the proposed research is to address
      gaps in the scientific literature by evaluating outcomes of three types of brief motivational
      interventions: a theoretically-based and empirically-tested counselor-administered
      intervention and the two most popular computerized interventions. A secondary purpose of the
      proposed research is to identify predictors of outcomes, and moderators associated with
      differential intervention response. A tertiary purpose is to assess the cost-effectiveness of
      three types of brief motivational interventions. The proposed research will be a randomized
      controlled trial with four treatment conditions and four assessment occasions. We will
      recruit at-risk student drinkers who have been sanctioned to receive an alcohol education
      intervention because they violated a residence hall policy. These referred students will be
      randomized to one of the three interventions, or to a delayed intervention control; and
      assessed at baseline and again 1, 6, and 12 months later on key drinking and drinking
      consequences outcomes.
    

Intervention name(s): Counselor-administered Brief Motivational Intervention (BMI); Alcohol 101 Plus (interactive CD-ROM); AlcoholEdu (Internet-based tutorial)
Intervention type(s): Behavioral; Behavioral; Behavioral
Intervention description(s): Students participate in a randomized study to evaluate 3 brief interventions: in-person brief motivational intervention, Alcohol 101plus (an interactive CD-ROM program), and AlcoholEdu (a Web-based tutorial). Participants will be followed over 12 months to determine changes in alcohol consumption and related problems.; Students participate in a randomized study to evaluate 3 brief interventions: in-person brief motivational intervention, Alcohol 101plus (an interactive CD-ROM program), and AlcoholEdu (a Web-based tutorial). Participants will be followed over 12 months to determine changes in alcohol consumption and related problems.; Students participate in a randomized study to evaluate 3 brief interventions: in-person brief motivational intervention, Alcohol 101plus (an interactive CD-ROM program), and AlcoholEdu (a Web-based tutorial). Participants will be followed over 12 months to determine changes in alcohol consumption and related problems.
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: None (Open Label)
Keywords: Alcohol Abuse; Alcohol Drinking; Intervention Studies; Computer-Assisted Instruction; College Students