Text-based Alcohol Prevention for First Year College Students
Condition: College Drinking
MeSH terms: Alcohol Drinking in College
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      This project aims to combat excessive perceived norms that contribute to high volume drinking
      by young adults, which adversely affects health and academic achievement. Campus-specific
      survey data will be used to craft accurate, pro-moderation campus norms, and deliver them to
      first-year students via daily text messages during the first semester of college. It is
      predicted that those receiving regular exposure to pro-moderation drinking norms will reduce
      their alcohol consumption and consequences, relative to students who receive
      non-alcohol-related control texts. This preliminary evaluation uses a novel method of
      delivering drinking norms and will lay the groundwork for future efforts to scale up this
      novel alcohol misuse prevention approach.
    

Detailed description: 
      Using mobile technology that most students already have in their pockets, this study
      evaluates a novel use of SMS text messages to change campus drinking norms. The aim is to
      correct exaggerated perceptions of drinking norms, and thereby reduce excessive drinking, by
      delivering daily text messages representing accurate, campus-specific, pro-moderation
      descriptive norms (what others do) and injunctive norms (what others approve of). It is
      predicted that with repeated exposure over time, this information will compete with other
      sources of normative information to which students are exposed during their first year of
      college. This exploratory study is designed to develop and refine message content and to
      pilot test the delivery methods.

      First year students (N=120) who are underage but report risky drinking (>4/day or >14/week
      for men; >3/day or >7/week for women) will be randomly assigned to two conditions differing
      by text content: alcohol norms or attention control. All will receive daily text messages
      throughout 10 weeks in the first semester of college. Process measures, 3-month post-test,
      and 3-month follow-up assessments will yield feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary
      outcome data to inform future larger scale randomized trials. Specifically, baseline,
      post-test, and 3-month follow-up assessments will allow us to test the hypotheses that the
      corrective norms intervention will reduce (a) perceived descriptive and injunctive norms, (b)
      drinking behavior (including high-volume drinking and risky consumption practices), and (c)
      alcohol-related consequences, and increase (d) protective behavioral strategies, relative to
      the control condition.

      At the end of this project the investigative team will have gathered data on both descriptive
      and injunctive norms on a range of drinking behaviors to identify topics in need of
      corrective normative feedback, refined the structure and content of the text messages, and
      pilot tested the text-delivered intervention in a small scale RCT. The proposed research will
      provide evidence of feasibility and efficacy of a text-based alcohol norms intervention for
      reducing excessive drinking among first-year students.
    

Intervention name(s): Alcohol texts; Attention control
Intervention type(s): Behavioral; Behavioral
Intervention description(s): A text message each day for 10 weeks, containing factual information about campus drinking norms.; A text message each day for 10 weeks, containing "this day in history" facts.
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: Single (Participant)
Primary purpose: Prevention
Keywords: alcohol abuse; college students; preventive programs; text messages