Alcohol PBS and Thinking About the Past

Texas A&M University

Status: Completed

Conditions: Alcohol Drinking in College

Treatments: Behavioral: Negative Event Only; Behavioral: Negative Event + Counterfactual Task; Behavioral: Personalized Normative Feedback; Behavioral: Negative Event + Factual Thinking Task

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT05208593

IRB20201070D

Details and patient eligibility

About

Individuals often think of how a situation or outcome could have turned out differently -- if only something was different or something had changed, then the outcome could have been better or worse. This is a common type of thinking, known as counterfactual thinking, that often takes the form of "if only" statements. These thoughts are frequent after negative events, but have also been found to occur after positive events and 'near misses'. Research has shown that their evaluative nature elicits a variety of consequences, such as biased decision making, changes in an event's meaningfulness, heightened positive or negative affect, and future behavioral changes (such as intentions, motivation, persistence/effort. Specifically, many areas of research involving counterfactuals have often looked into key elements that are often discussed in other health behavior literature, such as self-efficacy, motivation, and intentions. One such area that incorporates these elements is health promotion literature, such as Protective Behavioral Strategies (PBS) and alcohol consumption. The objectives of this study are laid out as such: First, to further explore the role counterfactuals play in increasing an individual's intentions toward behavioral change. Second, to further elucidate the inner and outer workings of Protective Behavioral Strategies for increasing positive health behaviors. Finally, to address the applicability of a counterfactual intervention on promoting intentions to use PBS.

Enrollment: 413 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• minimum age of 18 years

Exclusion criteria

• no exclusions at baseline
• participants who do not follow the instructions for the specific writing task will be unable to sign-up for the remaining follow up sessions (Parts 2-6) and will be excluded the final data analyses

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

---

413 participants in 4 patient groups, including a placebo group

Negative Event Only

Placebo Comparator group

Description:

Participants will be asked to think of a specific example of the most (or one of the most) negative, unpleasant event with alcohol they have experienced; the event they choose must have occurred at least a year ago. Or they will be asked to think of the most significant event that has occurred in the past year. After thinking of a specific event, they will be given three minutes to write about their experience. The writing prompt will ask that they express the event information in a few sentences. This writing prompt will help participants place themselves back into that moment and access salient emotions and cognition about it. Similar negative event prompts have been used in counterfactual thinking studies (McFarland \& Alvaro, 2000; White \& Lehman, 2005).

Treatment:

Behavioral: Negative Event Only

Negative Event + Factual Thinking Task

Active Comparator group

Description:

Participants in this group, the event plus the factual thinking task condition, will be told the following after completing the negative event writing task, "After disappointing and/or negative experiences like the one you described on the previous page, people often think about the details of the situation. For example, when it happened, who was involved, and what happened right before or after the incident occurred. In the space below please provide examples of some of these details.." There will be 10 blank boxes below the instructions and participants will be asked to provide some examples of details from their traumatic event. They will be asked to only list as many as they can naturally recall without repeating any. This procedure is derived from Kray and colleague's (2010) study on counterfactual thinking and meaning in life.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Negative Event + Factual Thinking Task

Negative Event + Counterfactual Task

Experimental group

Description:

Participants will be told after completing the negative event writing task, "After disappointing and/or negative experiences like the one you described, people sometimes cannot help thinking "what if..." or "if only..." and imagining how things might have gone differently. That is, if only I had done something differently, the negative drinking situation could have been avoided or turned out better. In the box below please identify things that, had they been different, would have improved the outcome of the negative drinking situation you described earlier and briefly describe how the outcome would have been better." Participants will be asked to list three counterfactuals about the event. Participants will also be asked to think of situations where these strategies could be used, to list out any obstacles that might prevent them from implementing these strategies and to indicate their intention to use each strategy over the next week.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Negative Event + Counterfactual Task

Personalized Normative Feedback

Experimental group

Description:

Participants in this group, the personalized normative feedback, will be asked to rate the frequency and quantity of TAMU students that use PBS when drinking.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Personalized Normative Feedback