Clinical trial NCT03008928: The Efficacy of the Alcooquizz App to Reduce Hazardous Alcohol Consumption
Official title: The Efficacy of the Alcooquizz App to Reduce Hazardous Alcohol Consumption: Randomized Controlled Trial
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Phase: NA
Conditions: Alcohol Consumption
Lead sponsor: Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
Sponsor class: OTHER
First posted: 2017-01-04
Enrollment: 987
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 18
Standard ages: ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: no
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
Primary purpose: OTHER

Brief summary: New technologies offer potential ways to provide and deliver preventative interventions. With respect to unhealthy alcohol use, offering people tools to assess and manage their risk at any given time using their smartphone may represent an additional opportunity to disseminate preventative interventions. Nevertheless, there is a lack of knowledge on the acceptability and efficacy of smartphone applications for unhealthy alcohol use. Alcooquizz, a smartphone app, has been previously evaluated using a before/after design without randomization, with participants reporting reductions in drinking over time. The current trial proposes to conduct an RCT, comparing reductions in alcohol consumption between participants provided access to Alcooquizz to a no intervention control.

Participants will be recruited through Amazon's MTurk crowdsourcing platform. Potential participants identified as problem drinkers based on an initial survey will be invited to complete another survey in 6 months time. Those who agree to be followed-up will be randomized to be provided a link to download the Alcooquizz app or to a no link control condition. At six-months post-baseline, the MTurk portal will be used to send invitation emails that contain a link to the follow-up survey that asks about their drinking and their impressions of the app. The primary hypothesis to be tested is that participants receiving access to the Alcooquizz app will report a greater level of reduction in number of drinks in a typical week between the baseline survey and six-month follow-up as compared to participants in the no information control condition.


Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* 18 years of age or over
* A score of 8 or over on the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT)
* Typically consumes 15 or more drinks per week,
* Willingness to complete a 6-month follow-up survey

Exclusion Criteria:

-

Primary outcomes:
measure: Change in number of drinks in a typical week from baseline
timeFrame: 6 months
Secondary outcomes:
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Toronto
country: Canada
facility: Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
state: Ontario
Study officials:
affiliation: Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
name: John A Cunningham, PhD
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References:
citation: Schell C, Godinho A, Cunningham JA. To thine own self, be true: Examining change in self-reported alcohol measures over time as related to socially desirable responding bias among people with unhealthy alcohol use. Subst Abus. 2021;42(1):87-93. doi: 10.1080/08897077.2019.1697998. Epub 2020 Feb 10.