Clinical trial NCT00289965: Substance Use Risk Education (SURE) Project
Official title: Brief Alcohol Interventions by Counselor vs Computer
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Phase: PHASE2
Conditions: Alcohol Abuse
Alcohol Drinking
Keywords: Alcohol Abuse
Alcohol Drinking
Intervention Studies
Computer-Assisted Instruction
College Students
Lead sponsor: Syracuse University
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)
First posted: 2006-02-10
Enrollment: 703
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 18
Maximum age (years): 25
Standard ages: ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL

Brief 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.

Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* Freshman, sophomore, and junior college students
* Students sanctioned for an alcohol-related violation on campus

Exclusion Criteria:

* Year in college: senior

Primary outcomes:
measure: mean number of drinks per week
timeFrame: 12 months
measure: drinks per drinking day
timeFrame: 12 months
measure: frequency of heavy drinking episodes
timeFrame: 12 months
measure: peak blood alcohol concentration (BAC)
timeFrame: 12 months
measure: Rutgers Alcohol Problems Index (RAPI) score
timeFrame: 12 months
Secondary outcomes:
measure: readiness to change
timeFrame: 12 months
measure: decisional balance
timeFrame: 12 months
measure: client satisfaction
timeFrame: 12 months
measure: norms perception
timeFrame: 12 months
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Syracuse
country: United States
facility: Syracuse University
state: New York
Study officials:
affiliation: Syracuse University
name: Kate B. Carey, PhD
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References:
citation: Fernandez AC, Yurasek AM, Merrill JE, Miller MB, Zamboanga BL, Carey KB, Borsari B. Do brief motivational interventions reduce drinking game frequency in mandated students? An analysis of data from two randomized controlled trials. Psychol Addict Behav. 2017 Feb;31(1):36-45. doi: 10.1037/adb0000239. Epub 2016 Dec 12.