Examining Expectancy Challenges to Prevent Nonmedical Prescription Stimulant Use
Condition: Prescription Drug Abuse (Not Dependent)
MeSH terms: Substance-Related Disorders
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      Nonmedical prescription stimulant use (NPS) is commonly reported among college students for
      cognitive enhancement purposes, though it is associated with numerous negative psychological
      and physical consequences. Despite increasingly high prevalence rates and widespread
      acknowledgement of the need for efficacious interventions, little is known regarding how to
      prevent or treat this behavior. An intervention that targets cognitive enhancement motives
      and expectancy effects related to NPS may be particularly effective in light of recent
      research purporting limited evidence for meaningful NPS-related cognitive improvements among
      individuals without legitimate attention deficits. The primary objective of this proposal is
      to examine the efficacy of an intervention that successfully prevents NPS among college
      students by modifying expectations for NPS-related effects, while at the same time providing
      alternative means of enhancing cognition and arousal. Participants will be 126
      stimulant-naïve college students who report a combination of risk factors for NPS. They will
      be randomized to one of three treatment conditions: a placebo-based expectancy challenge
      intervention that solely aims to modify expectancies related to NPS, a caffeine-based
      expectancy challenge intervention that includes expectancy modification combined with a safer
      alternative for cognitive enhancement, or a control group. Multilevel mixed modeling and
      survival analyses will be used to 1) examine changes in NPS-related expectancy effects across
      a 6-month follow-up period, and 2) assess incidence of NPS over the follow-up period,
      respectively, across the three groups. It is hypothesized that both expectancy challenge
      interventions will successfully modify expectancies compared to the control group and that
      they will be maintained over the follow-up period. It is also expected that the
      caffeine-based intervention will most successfully prevent NPS through a combination of
      expectancy modification and encouraging safe use of caffeine rather than prescription
      stimulants to achieve desired outcomes. Mediational analyses will also be employed to assess
      whether changes in expectancy effects via the interventions are responsible for differences
      in initiation rates between groups. The results of this project will facilitate the
      development of larger-scale prevention efforts to target the high rate of NPS on college
      campuses.
    


Intervention name(s): Caffeine-Based Expectancy Challenge; Placebo-Based Expectancy Challenge
Intervention type(s): Behavioral; Behavioral
Intervention description(s): Intervention to alter expectancies and encourage safe drug substitution (harm reduction plus expectancy modification); Intervention to alter expectancies (expectancy modification only)
Intervention MeSH terms: Caffeine
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: Single (Participant)
Primary purpose: Prevention
Keywords: Nonmedical prescription stimulant use; Expectancy challenge; College students