Attitudes & College Experiences

Brooklyn College of the City University of New York134 enrolled

Overview

High volume drinking by young adults has proven resistant to long term change, so new approaches are needed. Given strong associations between alcohol-related attitudes and drinking behavior, the investigators adapt a theory-based attitude change strategy for use in alcohol prevention. This research tests the impact of a brief counter attitudinal advocacy activity on subsequent drinking and negative consequences.

The persistence of risky drinking among young adults in college calls for continued efforts to prevent harms related to alcohol. Current prevention interventions have achieved some success, but rely on a single mechanism of change: correcting exaggerated drinking norms. The investigators propose to test a novel prevention strategy targeting another mechanism of change: creating attitude-behavior dissonance. To date, changing alcohol-related attitudes and the resulting attitude-behavior discrepancy has been underutilized as a behavior change strategy for alcohol abuse prevention. Informed by an extensive literature showing strong and consistent associations between alcohol attitudes and drinking behavior, the investigators adapted a brief counter-attitudinal advocacy (CAA) manipulation to the alcohol prevention context.

Study Type

INTERVENTIONAL

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

SINGLE

Enrollment

134

Conditions

Alcohol Abuse

Interventions

CAABEHAVIORAL

Participants will write about the use of PBS and alcohol use.

ControlBEHAVIORAL

Participants will write about eating and exercise.

Eligibility

Sex: ALLMin age: 18 YearsMax age: 26 YearsHealthy volunteers:

Medical Language ↔ Plain English

Inclusion Criteria: * 18-24 years of age * Enrolled in the university's undergraduate four-year degree program * Past month heavy episodic drinking (for men, \>5 drinks in one day, for women \>4 drinks in one day) * At least two self-reported negative consequence from drinking in the past month Exclusion Criteria: • Status as a graduating senior

Locations (1)

Brooklyn College

Brooklyn, New York, United States

Outcomes

Primary Outcomes

Change in Alcohol Consumption from Baseline to 1-Month

Average of reports from past 30 days on the number of standard drinks consumed by participant over the past 30 days.

Time frame: 1 month after baseline

Change in Alcohol-related consequences from Baseline to 1- and 3-Months

The Brief Young Adult Alcohol Consequences Questionnaire (BYAACQ) (Kahler et al., 2005) is a 24-item self-administered checklist of problems related to drinking; responses are dichotomous (yes/no) and refer to the past month which was collected at baseline and 5-months. The BYAACQ demonstrates strong psychometric properties and is free of gender bias (Kahler et al., 2005).

Time frame: 1 month and 3 months after baseline

Data from ClinicalTrials.gov

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