Nearly 13 million students are enrolled in community colleges, representing almost half of all young adults attending post-secondary education. The period of young adulthood (roughly 18-29) corresponds with the highest risk for alcohol use and related consequences. With nearly 50% of community college (CC) students between the ages of 18-24 (average age 28), it is critical to have efficacious alcohol interventions on CC campuses. Despite the advances in intervention development, implementation, and dissemination of alcohol interventions on four-year college campuses, to date very little work has been done to address the needs of CC students. In many respects, the impact of alcohol use and consequences may have greater impact for CC students who often carry multiple roles (other than just student, 44% work 40+ hours/week, 23% are married, 32% are parents [16% single parent]) at one time and may have fewer resources available to them than those afforded at a 4-year institution. Over the last two decades, brief interventions have been developed to address traditional four-year college student drinking, with the most successful involving the provision of accurate, non- judgmental personalized motivational feedback in person, such as Brief Alcohol Screening and Intervention for College Students (BASICS; Dimeff et al., 1999). BASICS is a NIAAA (2002) Tier 1 intervention, an approach with demonstrated effectiveness with college students. To date, evaluation of BASICS for CC has not been conducted, despite the large and growing population of CC students. However, there are considerations that must be made prior to embarking on such an approach with CC students, as most students spend significant time away from the community college setting engaged in social roles that may limit their ability to come to campus for non-academic activities (e.g., in-person interventions). Thus, adaptation of in-person BASICS is needed to reach CC students and maintain the efficacy evident when a MI-trained facilitator engages the student in discussion of the personalized feedback, as well as to adapt the normative comparison component of BASICS and incorporation of the multiple roles they are engaged in. The objective of this R34 application is to conduct formative research to assist with the adaptation of BASICS for use with CC students though an iterative process of adaptation and development through the use of prototype models and instructions, focus groups, usability testing, and individual interviews to develop a new delivery method (via web-conferencing), adapting normative and consequence-related content specific for CC students, and providing protective behavioral strategies via text-messages. In a small pilot study (N=120), we will establish acceptability, feasibility, and preliminary effect sizs to determine readiness for a future R01 application.
Nearly 13 million young adults are enrolled in community colleges, representing almost half of all young adults attending post-secondary education. With nearly 50% of community college students between the high-risk age of 18-24 for heavy alcohol use and consequences, there is a critical need for preventative intervention. Currently, no interventions exist for addressing alcohol use among community college students. The proposed research will help fill this existing gap by adapting the efficacious BASICs program for use among community college students.
| Lewis, Melissa A; Cadigan, Jennifer M; Cronce, Jessica M et al. (2018) Developing Text Messages to Reduce Community College Student Alcohol Use. Am J Health Behav 42:70-79 |
