Text-based Alcohol Prevention for First Year College Students

Correcting Exaggerated Drinking Norms With a Mobile Message Delivery System

This project aims to combat excessive perceived norms that contribute to high volume drinking by young adults, which adversely affects health and academic achievement. Campus-specific survey data will be used to craft accurate, pro-moderation campus norms, and deliver them to first-year students via daily text messages during the first semester of college. It is predicted that those receiving regular exposure to pro-moderation drinking norms will reduce their alcohol consumption and consequences, relative to students who receive non-alcohol-related control texts. This preliminary evaluation uses a novel method of delivering drinking norms and will lay the groundwork for future efforts to scale up this novel alcohol misuse prevention approach.

Using mobile technology that most students already have in their pockets, this study evaluates a novel use of text messages to change campus drinking norms. The aim is to correct exaggerated perceptions of drinking norms, and thereby reduce excessive drinking, by delivering daily text messages representing accurate, campus-specific, pro-moderation descriptive norms (what others do) and injunctive norms (what others approve of). It is predicted that with repeated exposure over time, this information will compete with other sources of normative information to which students are exposed during their first year of college. This exploratory study is designed to develop and refine message content and to pilot test the delivery methods.

First year students (N=120) who are underage but report risky drinking (>4/day or >14/week for men; >3/day or >7/week for women) will be randomly assigned to two conditions differing by text content: alcohol norms or attention control. All will receive daily text messages throughout 10 weeks in the first semester of college. Process measures, 3-month post-test, and 3-month follow-up assessments will yield feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary outcome data to inform future larger scale randomized trials. Specifically, baseline, post-test, and 3-month follow-up assessments will allow us to test the hypotheses that the corrective norms intervention will reduce (a) perceived descriptive and injunctive norms, (b) drinking behavior (including high-volume drinking and risky consumption practices), and (c) alcohol-related consequences, and increase (d) protective behavioral strategies, relative to the control condition.

At the end of this project the investigative team will have gathered data on both descriptive and injunctive norms on a range of drinking behaviors to identify topics in need of corrective normative feedback, refined the structure and content of the text messages, and pilot tested the text-delivered intervention in a small scale randomized controlled trial (RCT). The proposed research will provide evidence of feasibility and efficacy of a text-based alcohol norms intervention for reducing excessive drinking among first-year students.

Inclusion Criteria:

• 18-20 years of age
• enrolled as a first-year undergraduate student
• past month risky drinking
• possession of a mobile phone with text message capacity
• use text messaging at least weekly

Exclusion Criteria:

* currently engaged in alcohol treatment or in need of treatment (AUDIT score 20 or higher)