Alcohol Intervention for First Year College Students

The first year at college, and specifically the first 6 weeks of college, has been identified as a critical period particularly influential to college students' alcohol use trajectories. The prevalence of heavy drinking increases rapidly upon college entry relative to pre-college use and patterns of high-risk alcohol use established during the transition to college can result in a range of adverse consequences that persist throughout the academic year. While a large focus of research on U.S. college drinking has been on the prevalence of and problems related to heavy-episodic drinking (4+/5+ drinks in two hours for women/men), less research has focused on college students who are either abstainers (i.e., do not drink any alcohol) or lighter drinkers (i.e., men: 4 or fewer drinks in two hours and 14 or fewer drinks per week; women: 3 or fewer in two hours and 7 or fewer drinks per week). Research indicates that between 21% and 26% of first-year colleges students who were abstinent or light drinkers before college escalated to heavy episodic drinking during their freshman year. Further, 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 indicates that risk cognitions (i.e., prototypes, norms) are associated with initiation and escalation of alcohol use and also tend to peak around the time that individuals transition out of high school and into a riskier college environment. Delaying the onset of heavy-episodic drinking among abstainers and lighter drinkers during the first-year of college, a particularly high-risk period, should lead to reduced related harms throughout both the college years and young adulthood.

Tailoring intervention approaches to students at various levels of risk, including abstainers or lighter drinkers, may greatly increase efficacy and reduce costs associated with universal interventions (King et al., 2008). No single intervention is likely to sufficiently reduce college drinking or consequences; therefore a "mix of strategies is best". An underexplored strategy is delivering intervention content that reinforces existing reasons for not drinking among abstainers and lighter drinkers, with the goal of delaying the initiation of heavy drinking and/or the escalation to heavy drinking during the first year of college. Given that longitudinal findings indicate that stronger endorsement of reasons for drinking lightly or not drinking, such as academic responsibilities, normative influence, and concern for social images are associated with delayed alcohol initiation, lower levels of alcohol use and higher rates of abstention among young adults, including college students, interventions for abstainers and lighter drinkers that focus on reinforcing proximal reasons not to drink or to drink lightly have promise to dissuade students from initiation of drinking or to delay more hazardous drinking patterns later on.

Additionally, mobile phone-based interventions are an innovative method for reaching young people and have been established as an evidence-based, recommended approach towards addressing health issues including alcohol use. Mobile phone text-messaging (TM) offers an innovative technological approach to brief intervention for college students in a mode in which they are familiar and they already use frequently. Presenting preventative intervention content via TM, especially for abstainer and lighter drinking college students, may be one way to delay alcohol use initiation and prevent the escalation of alcohol use during the first year of college. Therefore, the present project has the following primary aims:

Aim 1: Recruit first year college students who are abstainers and lighter drinkers to examine students' reactions to TM intervention content through an iterative process of focus groups, intervention content development, and user feedback, which will inform a new intervention to be delivered in a pilot study (Aim 3).

Aim 2: Through focus groups, elicit responses to timing of the TM intervention, specifically what days and times per week and how many times per day (set within research-established ranges) abstainer and lighter drinkers think receiving TMs will the most useful and impactful to inform TM delivery for the pilot study (Aim 3).

Aim 3: Conduct a pilot study with 6 weeks of TM intervention content, a 6 week post-intervention assessment and 3, 6, and 9 month follow-ups among 100 abstainer or lighter drinking first-year college students to determine feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary effect sizes (to estimate power and sample sizes for a future R01). Newly enrolled first-year college students will be randomized to the TM intervention or assessment only control. The investigators hypothesize the TM Intervention will be feasible and acceptable to abstainer and lighter drinking students, including being accessible, usable, convenient, relevant and helpful. The investigators further hypothesize that receiving the TM intervention will be associated with less initiation and escalation of drinking, fewer negative consequences, more favorable prototypes of abstainers and lighter drinkers, greater perceived abstaining and light drinking norms, greater engagement and enjoyment of alternative activities, and greater endorsement of personal goals that do not involve alcohol at the 6 week post-intervention assessment and 3, 6, and 9 month follow-ups relative to assessment only control.