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Digital Motivational Behavioral Economic Intervention to Reduce Risky Drinking Among Community-Dwelling Emerging Adults (Horizons)

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University of Florida

Status

Enrolling

Conditions

Alcohol Drinking

Treatments

Behavioral: Motivational Behavioral Economic Alcohol Intervention
Behavioral: Health Education

Study type

Interventional

Funder types

Other
NIH

Identifiers

NCT05443750
IRB202201411
1R01AA028230-01A1 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

Details and patient eligibility

About

Emerging adult risky drinkers living in disadvantaged communities often have limited access to rewarding activities and adult roles that offer alternatives to heavy drinking. Guided by behavioral economics, this cluster randomized controlled trial will evaluate a brief behavioral intervention aimed at increasing future orientation and engaging pro-social alternatives to drinking delivered using a peer-driven sampling method and digital platform well suited for accessing their social networks.

Full description

Brief motivational interventions (BMIs) to reduce risky drinking in college students are well established as beneficial, but the needs of emerging adult (EA) risky drinkers who live in disadvantaged communities and are not fulltime college students have been neglected. They tend to have more constrained access to rewarding opportunities, adult roles, and activities that present pro-social alternatives to heavy drinking. When coupled with the foreshortened time horizons typical of many EAs, this suggests the need for interventions that not only enhance motivation to reduce drinking, but guide EAs to engage in alternatives to heavy drinking and orient their behavior toward longer-term positive goals. Guided by behavioral economics (BE), this study will disseminate and evaluate a brief motivational BE intervention that combines BMI elements with the Substance Free Activity Session shown to reduce drinking by increasing future orientation and engagement in pro-social alternatives. The intervention will be delivered using a digital platform appropriate for EAs whose social networks operate through such communications. Because peers influence substance use, a peer-driven sampling method (Respondent Driven Sampling [RDS]) will be used to recruit 500 community-dwelling EAs ages 18-28 for a cluster randomized controlled trial that compares the intervention with a health education control condition. Additional EA target population members ("seed" participants, n = 250) will start RDS recruitment but are not part of the intervention evaluation sample. The evaluation study will assess participants' drinking practices and problems, BE outcome predictors, and social networks at enrollment and at 1, 6, and 12-month follow-ups. Intervention efficacy and behavior change mechanisms will be examined. Reduced alcohol demand and delay discounting and favorable post-intervention shifts in future orientation, substance-free vs. substance-involved activities, and use of protective behavioral strategies to reduce drinking-related harms are predicted to mediate intervention effects. Social network analysis will assess whether the intervention attenuates network promotion of individual drinking. The study will be the first to test a web-based alcohol reduction intervention focused on BE principles and to use digital RDS to reach community-dwelling EAs for intervention. The study will translate and test BE mediators and moderators of change, and the digital intervention has high potential for reach and scalability with under-served community risk groups.

Enrollment

806 estimated patients

Sex

All

Ages

18 to 28 years old

Volunteers

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

  • Males and females ages 18-28 who are not enrolled fulltime in 4-year colleges/universities and who reside in disadvantaged North and Central Florida communities
  • Past 30-day alcohol use exceeding NIAAA (2005) single day limits for lower risk drinking (4 drinks for males; 3 drinks for women) and one or more alcohol-related negative consequences in the past 90 days
  • Web access via smartphone or computer; and (4) minimum 8th grade education, the level necessary to use study materials.

Exclusion criteria

  • Age out of range
  • Blood relatives of previously enrolled participants
  • Invalid enrollment referral number
  • Fulltime college students
  • Absence of above drinking risk indicators
  • Lack of smartphone or computer availability
  • Education less than 8th grade

Trial design

Primary purpose

Treatment

Allocation

Randomized

Interventional model

Parallel Assignment

Masking

Triple Blind

806 participants in 2 patient groups

Motivational Behavioral Economic Intervention
Experimental group
Description:
Web-based alcohol risk reduction brief intervention
Treatment:
Behavioral: Motivational Behavioral Economic Alcohol Intervention
Health Education
Active Comparator group
Description:
Web-based health education material
Treatment:
Behavioral: Health Education

Trial contacts and locations

1

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Central trial contact

Lesleigh A Stinson, PhD, BCBA; Manju Karki, MPH

Data sourced from clinicaltrials.gov

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