An interventional study of Parent handbook and Coping with negative emotions in Alcohol Drinking in College, sponsored by University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Completed at 1 site in United States. Open to participants aged 18 Years and older. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2026-08-28.
Sponsored by University of Massachusetts, Amherst · Not applicable, Interventional, and Prevention
All students who enroll in the study will receive an efficacious counselor-delivered brief motivational intervention. The intervention is based in principles of motivational interviewing. Students complete a baseline assessment on their alcohol use and alcohol-related consequences. During the hour-long session, the counselor uses information from the baseline assessment to compare the student's level of alcohol consumption to that of peers at the same university, discuss choices that may lead to experiencing negative consequences, and provide opportunities for the student to set goals for risk reduction.
This study will develop and pilot a maintenance enhancement intervention. The intervention is expected to consist of four components, for example: (1) Student participants may learn to use techniques based in mindfulness to cope with negative emotions. (2) Student participants may identify barriers to reducing their alcohol use and identify protective strategies for navigating those barriers. (3) Student participants may be presented with narratives from other students who successfully resumed moderate drinking after a heavy drinking episode. Students may also be prompted to identify alcohol free activities that they enjoy and can engage in after experiencing a heavy drinking episode. (4) Parents may also receive a handbook encouraging communication with their student about alcohol use.
38 studies on the registry are indexed under Alcohol Drinking in College; 8 are open to participants now.
This study's enrollment of 38 is below the median of 258 across 36 interventional studies indexed under Alcohol Drinking in College.
Browse Alcohol Drinking in College studies →University of Massachusetts, Amherst is the lead sponsor of 48 studies on the registry; 5 are open to participants now.
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Student participants must meet the following eligibility criteria:
Parent participants must meet the following eligibility criteria:
Exclusion Criteria:
Participants will learn to use techniques based in mindfulness as a means for coping with negative emotions. The participants' parent(s) will also receive a handbook that encourages communication with their child about alcohol use. Participants will be prompted to identify both barriers to reducing their alcohol use and protective strategies for navigating those barriers. To improve their confidence to resume moderate drinking after having a heavy drinking episode, participants will be presented with narratives from other students who successfully resumed moderate drinking after a heavy drinking episode. Students will also be prompted to identify alcohol free activities that they enjoy and can engage in after experiencing a heavy drinking episode.
Behavioral: Parent handbook · Behavioral: Coping with negative emotions · Behavioral: Problem-solving risky situations · Behavioral: Recovering from slips
Participants will learn to use techniques based in mindfulness as a means for coping with negative emotions. The participants' parent(s) will also receive a handbook that encourages communication with their child about alcohol use. Participants will be prompted to identify both barriers to reducing their alcohol use and protective strategies for navigating those barriers.
Behavioral: Parent handbook · Behavioral: Coping with negative emotions · Behavioral: Problem-solving risky situations
Participants will learn to use techniques based in mindfulness as a means for coping with negative emotions. The participants' parent(s) will also receive a handbook that encourages communication with their child about alcohol use. To improve their confidence to resume moderate drinking after having a heavy drinking episode, participants will be presented with narratives from other students who successfully resumed moderate drinking after a heavy drinking episode. Students will also be prompted to identify alcohol free activities that they enjoy and can engage in after experiencing a heavy drinking episode.
Behavioral: Parent handbook · Behavioral: Coping with negative emotions · Behavioral: Recovering from slips
Participants will learn to use techniques based in mindfulness as a means for coping with negative emotions. The participants' parent(s) will also receive a handbook that encourages communication with their child about alcohol use.
Behavioral: Parent handbook · Behavioral: Coping with negative emotions
Participants will learn to use techniques based in mindfulness as a means for coping with negative emotions. Participants will be prompted to identify both barriers to reducing their alcohol use and protective strategies for navigating those barriers. To improve their confidence to resume moderate drinking after having a heavy drinking episode, participants will be presented with narratives from other students who successfully resumed moderate drinking after a heavy drinking episode. Students will also be prompted to identify alcohol free activities that they enjoy and can engage in after experiencing a heavy drinking episode.
Behavioral: Coping with negative emotions · Behavioral: Problem-solving risky situations · Behavioral: Recovering from slips
Participants will learn to use techniques based in mindfulness as a means for coping with negative emotions. Participants will be prompted to identify both barriers to reducing their alcohol use and protective strategies for navigating those barriers.
Behavioral: Coping with negative emotions · Behavioral: Problem-solving risky situations
Participants will learn to use techniques based in mindfulness as a means for coping with negative emotions. To improve their confidence to resume moderate drinking after having a heavy drinking episode, participants will be presented with narratives from other students who successfully resumed moderate drinking after a heavy drinking episode. Students will also be prompted to identify alcohol free activities that they enjoy and can engage in after experiencing a heavy drinking episode.
Behavioral: Coping with negative emotions · Behavioral: Recovering from slips
Participants will learn to use techniques based in mindfulness as a means for coping with negative emotions.
Behavioral: Coping with negative emotions
The participants' parent(s) will receive a handbook that encourages communication with their child about alcohol use. Participants will be prompted to identify both barriers to reducing their alcohol use and protective strategies for navigating those barriers. To improve their confidence to resume moderate drinking after having a heavy drinking episode, participants will be presented with narratives from other students who successfully resumed moderate drinking after a heavy drinking episode. Students will also be prompted to identify alcohol free activities that they enjoy and can engage in after experiencing a heavy drinking episode.
Behavioral: Parent handbook · Behavioral: Problem-solving risky situations · Behavioral: Recovering from slips
The participants' parent(s) will receive a handbook that encourages communication with their child about alcohol use. Participants will be prompted to identify both barriers to reducing their alcohol use and protective strategies for navigating those barriers. To improve their confidence to resume moderate drinking after having a heavy drinking episode, participants will be presented with narratives from other students who successfully resumed moderate drinking after a heavy drinking episode. Students will also be prompted to identify alcohol free activities that they enjoy and can engage in after experiencing a heavy drinking episode.
Behavioral: Parent handbook · Behavioral: Problem-solving risky situations
The participants' parent(s) will receive a handbook that encourages communication with their child about alcohol use. To improve their confidence to resume moderate drinking after having a heavy drinking episode, participants will be presented with narratives from other students who successfully resumed moderate drinking after a heavy drinking episode. Students will also be prompted to identify alcohol free activities that they enjoy and can engage in after experiencing a heavy drinking episode.
Behavioral: Parent handbook · Behavioral: Recovering from slips
The participants' parent(s) will receive a handbook that encourages communication with their child about alcohol use.
Behavioral: Parent handbook
Participants will be prompted to identify both barriers to reducing their alcohol use and protective strategies for navigating those barriers. To improve their confidence to resume moderate drinking after having a heavy drinking episode, participants will be presented with narratives from other students who successfully resumed moderate drinking after a heavy drinking episode. Students will also be prompted to identify alcohol free activities that they enjoy and can engage in after experiencing a heavy drinking episode.
Behavioral: Problem-solving risky situations · Behavioral: Recovering from slips
Participants will be prompted to identify both barriers to reducing their alcohol use and protective strategies for navigating those barriers.
Behavioral: Problem-solving risky situations
To improve their confidence to resume moderate drinking after having a heavy drinking episode, participants will be presented with narratives from other students who successfully resumed moderate drinking after a heavy drinking episode. Students will also be prompted to identify alcohol free activities that they enjoy and can engage in after experiencing a heavy drinking episode.
Behavioral: Recovering from slips
Participants in this condition will complete assessments but will not receive any additional intervention content.
Handbook motivating parents to discuss alcohol use with their college student.
Mindfulness-based techniques are taught to improve ability to cope with negative emotions.
Identifying and planning for barriers to change are encouraged.
Peer and personalized techniques are discussed to facilitate resumption of moderate drinking after a heavy drinking episode.
Drinking Intentions
Drinking intentions will be assessed using a modified version of the daily drinking questionnaire (Young, Rodriguez, \& Neighbors, 2013). Participants will complete a 7-day grid, indicating how many drinks they intend to consume on a typical Sunday, Monday, etc. in the next month. Responses will be summed to capture intentions for typical weekly drinking.
Time frame: Immediate post-test
Coping motives
Thirteen items will be assessed capturing drinking to cope with both anxiety and depression (Cooper, 1994; Grant, Stewart, O'Connor, Blackwell, \& Conrod, 2007). Items assess using alcohol "to reduce my anxiety" or "to forget my worries" and are rated on a 1 (almost never/never) to 5 (almost always/always) scale. Items will be averaged to form separate scale scores for coping with anxiety and coping with depression. The measure has been shown to be reliable among college students.
Time frame: Immediate post-test
Parent-student communication
Five items will assess parents' intentions for engaging in general communication with their child about school, social activities, personal issues, romantic relationships, and personal problems (Barnes, Hoffman, Welte, Farrell, \& Dintcheff, 2006). Items are rated on a 1 (not at all) to 7 (frequently) scale and averaged to form a scale score. This measure has been shown to be responsive to a parent-based intervention and reliable among college students (Testa, Hoffman, Livingston, \& Turrisi, 2010).
Time frame: Immediate post-test
Maintenance self-efficacy
Maintenance self-efficacy will be assessed with the 8-item Brief Situational Confidence Questionnaire (BSCQ; Breslin, Sobell, Sobell, \& Agrawal, 2000). Student participants will indicate confidence in their ability to resist drinking heavily in eight situations, such as during pleasant times with others, (e.g., celebrating with a friend). Items are rated from 0% (not at all confident) to 100% (completely confident) and averaged to form a scale score. The measure is reliable and detects intervention-induced change among non-dependent young adults (Magill et al., 2017).
Time frame: Immediate post-test
Recovery self-efficacy
Recovery self-efficacy will be assessed with nine items adapted from previous research (Luszczynska, Mazurkiewicz, Ziegelmann, \& Schwarzer, 2007). One item will assess overall recovery self-efficacy and eight will mirror the situations used in the BSCQ . Items include, "I am confident that I could resume moderate drinking, even if I drank heavily because I was enjoying pleasant times with others." Like the BSCQ, items will be rated from 0% (not at all confident) to 100% (completely confident).
Time frame: Immediate post-test
Ran from Nov 2025 to primary completion in Aug 2026, 9 months.
Of 23 interventional studies with no phase under Alcohol Drinking in College, half reached primary completion within 9 months of starting (the median), counting those still running; a quarter within 7 and three quarters within 20. This study's 9 months is close to that.
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This study is completed, as verified in Aug 2026. You cannot join it, but the record below documents what was studied.
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University of Massachusetts, Amherst