Providing Web-Based Feedback and Social Norms Information to Reduce Student Alcohol Intake: A Multisite Investigation

Abstract

BackgroundUnhealthy alcohol use among university students is cause for concern, yet the level of help seeking behavior for alcohol use is low within the student population. Electronic brief interventions delivered via the Internet present an alternative to traditional treatments and could enable the delivery of interventions on a population basis. Further evidence is needed of the effectiveness of Internet-delivered interventions and of their generalizability across educational institutions.ObjectiveOur objective was to evaluate the effectiveness across 4 UK universities of a Web-based intervention for student alcohol use.MethodsIn total, 1112 participants took part. Participants were stratified by educational institution, gender, age group, year of study, and self-reported weekly consumption of alcohol and randomly assigned to either the control arm or to the immediate or delayed intervention arms. Intervention participants gained access to the intervention between weeks 1 to 7 or weeks 8 to 15, respectively. The intervention provided electronic personalized feedback and social norms information on drinking behavior accessed by logging on to a website. Participants registered interest by completing a brief screening questionnaire and were then asked to complete 4 further assessments across the 24 weeks of the study. Assessments included a retrospective weekly drinking diary, the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT), and a readiness-to-change algorithm. The outcome variable was the number of units of alcohol consumed in the last week. The effect of treatment arm and time on units consumed last week and average units consumed per drinking occasion were investigated using repeated measures multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA). In addition, the data were modeled using a longitudinal regression with time points clustered within students.ResultsMANCOVA revealed a main effect of time on units of alcohol consumed over the last week. A longitudinal regression model showed an effect of assessment across time predicting that participants who completed at least 2 assessments reduced their drinking. The model predicted an additional effect of being assigned to an intervention arm, an effect that increased across time. Regression analysis predicted that being male or being assigned to an intervention arm increased the odds of not completing all assessments. The number of units of alcohol consumed over the last week at registration, age, university educational institution, and readiness to change were not predictive of completion.ConclusionsDelivering an electronic personalized feedback intervention to students via the Internet can be effective in reducing weekly alcohol consumption. The effect does not appear to differ by educational institution. Our model suggested that monitoring alone is likely to reduce weekly consumption over 24 weeks but that consumption could be further reduced by providing access to a Web-based intervention. Further research is needed to understand the apparent therapeutic effect...

Normative feedback for parents of college students: Piloting a parent based intervention to correct misperceptions of students' alcohol use and other parents' approval of drinking

“…Furthermore, research is also needed to examine the use of different formats of this novel parent normative feedback intervention. For example, research among college students has demonstrated the potential efficacy of web-based personalized normative feedback (Bewick et al, 2010; Neighbors et al, 2010; Walters, Vader, & Harris, 2007), in-person group interventions (LaBrie et al, 2010; LaBrie et al, 2008) and gender-specific normative feedback (Lewis & Neighbors, 2007; Neighbors et al, 2010). There is potential to adapt these approaches for use among college parents to further strengthen the effects of a norms-based PBI.…”

Perceived Peer Drinking Norms and Responsible Drinking in UK University Settings

“…Here we found no influence on drinking intentions following exposure to messages designed to influence normative drinking perceptions. It may be that different social norms approaches are better suited, e.g., personalized feedback about how drinking behavior relates to specific norm reference groups (Moreira et al, 2009a,b;Bewick, 2010), rather than the use of messages about campus wide drinking norms, as was the focus of the present study.…”

“…In this study perceived drinking norms were associated with individual differences in drinking behavior (i.e., heavier drinkers tended to overestimate how much their peers drank). A UK trial tested the effects of personalized social norm feedback on self-reported drinking via an internet intervention (Bewick, 2010), but as the social norms component was paired with other information it is not possible to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of the social norms information in isolation. In a large randomized control trial across 22 UK universities, Moreira et al (2009b) found that a personalized norm feedback intervention was not effective in reducing heavy drinking.…”

Calidad de los datos de encuestas sobre consumo de alcohol en estudiantes universitarios

“…Investigaciones en otros contextos indican que el uso de incentivos mínimos (e.g. bolígrafos) 15 o pre-incentivos fomentaría una participación más cercana a la obtenida mediante cuestionarios en papel y lápiz y en entrevistas cara a cara 19 , las cuales fueron muy satisfactorias. Por otro lado, también han sido usados con éxito recordatorios complementarios como cartas o mensajes de texto 9,14 .…”

“…Este punto de corte es el recomendado para la detección de trastornos actuales por uso de alcohol de acuerdo con la 10 a revisión de la Clasificación Internacional de Enfermedades (CIE-10) 17 . Se escogió esta escala por ser una de las más utilizadas para evaluar problemas por uso de alcohol con cuestionarios online 19,20,21,22,23,24 . El consumo excesivo episó-dico de alcohol fue estimado con dos preguntas mediante el enfoque de cantidad-frecuencia graduada, i.e.…”