Alcohol Intervention for First Year College Students

Completed · Not applicable

Conditions studied: Underage Alcohol Use

In brief

While a large focus of research on U.S. college drinking has focused on the prevalence of and problems related to heavy-episodic drinking, less has focused on college students who are either abstainers or lighter drinkers (i.e., for men, drinking 4 or fewer drinks in two hours and 14 or fewer drinks per week; and for women drinking 3 or fewer in two hours and 7 or fewer drinks per week). Over 40% percent of college students ages 18-22 do not report drinking in the past month with only half of those engaging in regular heavy-episodic drinking. Research suggests that a significant proportion of students who were abstinent or light drinkers prior to and upon entering college initiate drinking and progress to becoming heavy-episodic drinkers. This provides evidence that the first few months of college is a high-risk time for initiating both drinking and heavy-episodic drinking and that delaying the onset of heavy-episodic drinking among light drinkers and abstainers should lead to reduced harms throughout the college years and young adulthood. Mobile phone-based interventions are an innovative method for reaching young people and have been established as an empirical approach towards addressing health issues, including alcohol use. The ultimate goal of this proposal is to develop, refine and pilot a text message (TM) intervention for abstainer and lighter drinking first year college students with the ultimate goal of delaying alcohol initiation and/or reducing alcohol use escalation. An iterative process of focus groups, intervention content development, and user feedback focused on the unique experiences of abstainers and lighter drinkers will inform the TM Intervention to be delivered in a pilot study with 6 weeks of TMs. The pilot study will include a 6 week post-intervention assessment, and 3, 6, and 9 month follow-ups among 100 incoming first year abstainer and lighter drinker college students. Given that reducing young adults' and college students' engagement in excessive alcohol use has been listed as a major objective of Healthy People 2020 and a key priority of NIAAA, an intervention that focuses on delaying alcohol initiation and escalation into higher-risk alcohol use among abstainer and lighter drinkers could make important strides to achieving this goal.

Key facts

Study ID: NCT03750838
Run by: University of North Texas Health Science Center
People needed: 99
Starts: 2021-06-01
Expected to finish: 2023-08-01
Last updated by the study team: 2024-01-19

Who can join

Age: 18 and older, up to 19. Sex: any. Healthy volunteers: accepted.

You may qualify if…

Eligibility criteria includes:
age 18-19 (see Identity and Age Verification below; If a participant screens in at 18 and turns 20 prior to the focus group, the participant will be allowed to be in the research study.)
birth date that is consistent with their given age
first-year college student at the University of North Texas
valid email address
have a text messaging plan on their mobile phone
drinking 14/7 or fewer drinks per week for men/women
no episodes in the past month of consuming 5/4 drinks in two hours for men/women
express any willingness to take a sip of alcohol
if female, must not be pregnant or trying to get pregnant
willing to participate in focus groups at the University of North Texas

You may not qualify if…

Not meeting inclusion criteria
unwillingness to participate
failure to provide consent (e.g., declining participation in the study)
providing inconsistent responses (e.g., age) identified by the survey
having already participated in the study as identified by overlap or consistency in computer IP addresses, contact information, and demographics

Where it is running

Dana — Fort Worth, Texas, United States

Full record on ClinicalTrials.gov

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