Female adolescents are at high risk of STD infection and physical assault relative to other demographic groups. Because alcohol use is implicated in many incidents of indiscriminate relationships and assault, reducing alcohol consumption, particularly binge drinking, may be an effective means of preventing STD/HIV infection and assault in college women. The proposed research will refine and extend a drinking reduction intervention that has proven successful in reducing adolescent alcohol use and its associated negative consequences. This innovative intervention involves providing parents with a handbook that provides information on adolescent alcohol use and its negative consequences and enlisting parents to communicate this information with their teenagers. Parent intervention before college entrance appears to inoculate young people against normative pressure to drink in college, thereby reducing drinking and its associated negative consequences. This intervention may be made even more effective in preventing negative outcomes by adding a component that addresses explicitly issues of partner discrimination and assertiveness. We plan to develop an intervention manual for parents of incoming college women that targets both alcohol use and risky behavior. During the summer before college entrance, 600 female students and their mothers will be randomly assigned to one of three intervention conditions: alcohol only, combined alcohol + risky behavior, or control (no intervention). Efficacy of the interventions will be assessed by examining drinking behavior, drinking related consequences, risky behavior, and negative outcomes (e.g., assault and STD infection) reported by these female students during their first year of college. We will examine processes by which the interventions influence behavior and seek to identify demographic and psychological characteristics of students and parents that may moderate intervention effectiveness. The proposed research is an outgrowth of the PI's Independent Scientist Award (K02 AA00284), which has supported the extension of Dr. Testa's work from basic to prevention research. Consistent with the aims of the RFA, the project will develop and test a prevention program designed to reduce young women's vulnerability to alcohol-related assault and HIV infection. Moreover, the project will help to understand the relative importance of alcohol use in the acquisition of HIV, another of the goals of the RFA, by comparing the impact of an alcohol reduction intervention with the impact of an alcohol plus risk reduction intervention on outcome measures.
