This proposed research will conduct a randomized trials to test an innovative and interactive and proactive secondary prevention program for college students to reduce high risk alcohol behaviors and minimize alcohol related problems. High volume episodic or """"""""binge"""""""" drinking is a major problem on most college campuses. But most students do not perceive their high risk alcohol behaviors as problematic, and few are prepared to change those behaviors. Effective interventions are needed that can impact on an entire population of students at risk for alcohol problems. Such interventions should be theory based and capable of being delivered at a low cost to large segments of the at-risk population. The proposed study is an evaluation of the efficacy of a computerized expert system intervention designed to reduce alcohol problem behaviors, and is based on the conceptual framework of the Transtheoretical Model. Over the past decade researchers at the University of Rhode Island (URI) have developed and tested self-help prevention interventions using expert system technology that provides individualized feedback on some of the most powerful variables known to influence behavior change. These interactive interventions are matched to an individual's stage of motivational readiness to change, and have demonstrated unprecedented impacts in a series of large scale clinical trials of smoking cessation and other health behaviors. This study focuses on students during a high risk transition period-the freshman and sophomore years, and will target drinkers and second year URI students will be assessed by telephone to determine eligibility. 1,420 subjects are expected to participate. A three group randomized controlled design will a brief intervention condition that provides three report expert system feedback reports with two control conditions; a minimal assessment post-test only control and an assessment only condition. All groups will be assessed at 12, 18 and 24 months. In addition, the intervention and the assessment only control will be assessed at baseline, 3 and 6 months. Multiple measures of drinking rates, alcohol behaviors, and alcohol-related problems will be the primary outcomes for the efficacy evaluation. This project is designed to be rapidly disseminable so that results may be used in public health efforts to decrease the incidence of, and problems associated with, high risk drinking among college students.
| Laforge, Robert G; Borsari, Brian; Baer, John S (2005) The utility of collateral informant assessment in college alcohol research: results from a longitudinal prevention trial. J Stud Alcohol 66:479-87 |
