Integrating social media inspired features into a personalized normative feedback intervention combats social media-based alcohol influence

BACKROUND

Research suggests that the social media platforms popular on college campuses may reflect, reinforce, and even exacerbate heavy drinking practices among students. The present study was designed to directly examine: (1) whether exposure to alcohol-related content on social media diminishes the efficacy of a traditional web-based personalized normative feedback (PNF) alcohol intervention among first-year drinkers; and (2) if social media inspired features and digital game mechanics can be integrated into a PNF intervention to combat social media-based alcohol influence and increase efficacy.

METHOD

Alcohol experienced first-year college students (N = 223) completed a pre-survey that assessed exposure to alcohol-related content and social media and were randomized to 1 of 3 web-based alcohol PNF conditions (traditional, gamified only, or social media inspired gamified). One month later, participants' alcohol consumption was reassessed.

RESULTS

Among participants who received traditional PNF, social media-based alcohol exposure interacted with pre-intervention drinking such that traditional PNF was less effective in reducing drinking among heavier drinkers reporting greater exposure to alcohol-related social media content. Further, when regression models compared the efficacy of all three conditions, the social media inspired gamified PNF condition was significantly more effective in reducing drinking than was traditional PNF among moderate and heavy drinkers reporting greater exposure to alcohol on social media.

CONCLUSION

Although additional research is needed, these findings suggest that representing the population of students on whom normative statistics are based with social media-like user avatars and profiles may enhance the degree to which alcohol PNF is relatable and believable among high-risk students.

Alcohol intake in early adulthood and risk of colorectal cancer: three large prospective cohort studies of men and women in the United States

Heavy alcohol consumption in mid-adulthood is an established risk factor of colorectal cancer (CRC). Alcohol use in early adulthood is common, but its association with subsequent CRC risk remains largely unknown. We prospectively investigated the association of average alcohol intake in early adulthood (age 18-22) with CRC risk later in life among 191,543 participants of the Nurses' Health Study ([NHS], 1988-2014), NHSII (1989-2015) and Health Professionals Follow-Up Study (1988-2014). Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs), which were pooled using random effects models. We documented 2,624 CRC cases. High alcohol consumption in early adulthood (≥ 15 g/day) was associated with a higher CRC risk (multivariable HR 1.28, 95% CI 0.99-1.66, Ptrend = 0.02; Pheterogeneity = 0.44), after adjusting for potential confounding factors in early adulthood. Among never/light smokers in early adulthood, the risk associated with high alcohol consumption in early adulthood was elevated (HR 1.53, 95% CI 1.04-2.24), compared with those who had < 1 g/day of alcohol intake. The suggestive higher CRC risk associated with high alcohol consumption in early adulthood was similar in those who had < 15 g/day (HR 1.35, 95% CI 0.98-1.86) versus ≥ 15 g/day of midlife alcohol intake (HR 1.35, 95% CI 0.89-2.05), compared with nondrinkers in both life stages. The findings from these large prospective cohort studies suggest that higher alcohol intake in early adulthood may be associated with a higher risk of developing CRC later in life.

Alcohol mixed with energy drinks: Expectancies of use and alcohol-related negative consequences among a young adult sample

OBJECTIVE

Energy drinks are a popular mixer with alcohol among college-aged young adults. Few studies to date have examined the relationships between expectancies of alcohol mixed with energy drink (AmED) use, AmED use and AmED-related negative consequences.

METHODS

Eighty college-aged young adults were surveyed regarding their alcohol and AmED use, related negative consequences and AmED expectancies. Associations were assessed using chi-square tests and Cramér's V. A simple mediational model also was used to explore the potential relationships between AmED expectancies, AmED use and AmED-related negative consequences.

RESULTS

AmED use was associated with more types of related negative consequences than heavy alcohol use alone, and where AmED use and heavy alcohol use were mutually associated with a related negative consequence, the strength of association was stronger for AmED use. While several AmED-related negative consequences were associated with AmED expectancies, unwanted sexual contact and getting into a verbal argument were associated with the greatest number of expectancies. The mediational model identified a statistically significant indirect effect of AmED expectancies on AmED-related negative consequences mediated by AmED use.

CONCLUSIONS

The study results contribute to the evidence that AmED use may confer additional risk for related negative consequences beyond heavy alcohol use and suggest that AmED expectancies may have a role in AmED use, which, in turn, is associated with AmED-related negative consequences. AmED expectancies may be targets for intervention to reduce AmED use considering the possible subsequent related negative consequences, especially those involving negative interpersonal experiences.

Guilt and expressive writing for reducing alcohol use in college students: Study protocol for a randomized control trial

The current proposed study aims to evaluate expressive writing as a novel intervention for reducing problematic drinking among college students. College students are at increased risk for alcohol misuse compared to other adults, and the development of efficacious intervention approaches is an urgent priority. The vast majority of individually focused brief interventions targeting college drinking have focused on personalized feedback approaches and recent innovations have largely been limited to refinements of this paradigm, which require large-scale assessment and intricate programming for implementation. The present research proposes expressive writing as a novel alternative, which has been used extensively in other domains but not as an alcohol intervention strategy. We propose a theoretically-based approach that incorporates expression of the self-conscious emotion of guilt and the written analogue of change talk as proposed mechanisms of intervention efficacy. We will also examine individual differences in guilt-proneness as a moderator of intervention efficacy. Heavy drinking college students (N = 600) will be randomly assigned to one of six expressive writing conditions based on a 2 (alcohol vs. distress) × 2 (guilt vs. no guilt) + 1 (control writing) + 1 (personalized feedback) design. Participation in the study involves completion of a screening assessment, a baseline assessment, three in-lab intervention sessions, post-intervention assessments, and follow-up assessments one-month, three-months, six months, and twelve-months later. If effective, this novel intervention approach would not require any pre-assessment or programming of personalized feedback, and would serve as a more easily disseminable alternative to existing approaches.

Influencing college students' normative perceptions of protective behavioral strategies: A pilot randomized trial

INTRODUCTION

Personalized feedback interventions (PFIs) are associated with small but reliable decreases in alcohol consumption among college students. While they often include information regarding protective behavioral strategies (PBS), PFIs do not typically include feedback aimed to modify normative perceptions of PBS. This study aimed to enhance the efficacy of existing PFIs among college students by incorporating normative feedback on participants' use of PBS.

METHODS

Students enrolled in undergraduate courses (N = 268) completed baseline and 1-month follow-up assessments of past-month use of PBS, normative perceptions of PBS use, alcohol consumption, and alcohol-related consequences. Participants were randomized to one of three conditions: typical feedback on PBS (typical strategies PFI), descriptive normative feedback on PBS (strategy norms PFI), or assessment-only control (AOC). Participants in the typical strategies PFI and strategy norms PFI conditions received web-based personalized feedback profiles.

RESULTS

Compared to AOC, both the strategy norms PFI and typical strategies PFI were effective in correcting participants' perceptions of other students' engagement in PBS (p = .01) but did not differ significantly from one another. No statistically significant differences were observed between conditions in terms of actual PBS use, alcohol consumption, or alcohol-related consequences at 1-month follow-up (p > .05).

DISCUSSION

The strategy norms and typical strategies PFIs were both successful in increasing normative perceptions of PBS use, indicating that general (rather than normative) feedback regarding PBS use may be sufficient for changing perceptions of PBS use.

Is Alcohol and Other Substance Use Reduced When College Students Attend Alcohol-Free Programs? Evidence from a Measurement Burst Design Before and After Legal Drinking Age

College drinking and its negative consequences remain a major public health concern. Yet, many prevention efforts targeting college drinkers are expensive, are difficult to implement, use indicated approaches targeting only high-risk drinkers, and/or are only marginally effective. An alternative strategy taken explicitly or implicitly by many colleges is campus-led alcohol-free programming which provides students with attractive leisure alternatives to drinking on weekend nights. This study aimed to extend work by Patrick et al. (Prevention Science, 11, 155-162, 2010), who found that students drank less on weekend nights they attended LateNight Penn State (LNPS) activities during their first semester of college. Here, daily diary and longitudinal data on college students' daily lives and risk behaviors were collected from 730 students on 19,506 person-days across seven semesters at a large university in the Northeastern United States. Generalized linear mixed models were used to estimate alcohol and illegal substance use on weekend days as a function of LNPS attendance, gender, legal drinking status (≥ 21 years), and day of the weekend. Across college, students who attended LNPS used alcohol and illegal substances less in general and less on days they participated compared to themselves on days they did not participate. Legal drinking status moderated the association between LNPS attendance and alcohol and illegal substance use such that levels of use were lowest for students under 21 years old on weekend days they attended LNPS. Our findings provide support for campus-led alcohol-free programming as a potential harm reduction strategy on college campuses.

Self-reported campus alcohol policy and college alcohol consumption: a multilevel analysis of 4592 Korean students from 82 colleges

BACKGROUND

Campus alcohol policy has been associated with student alcohol consumption in numerous studies. However, more information is required to assess the extent to which school policy affects student drinking behavior; especially when both individual-level sociodemographic characteristics of students and area-level characteristics of college campuses are controlled for. Thus, this paper explores the association between campus alcohol policy and student alcohol consumption among a nationally representative sample of college students in South Korea, while controlling for both individual and area-level characteristics.

METHODS

We surveyed and analyzed the data of 4592 students from 82 colleges. Multilevel (hierarchical) linear modeling was used to identify the association between campus alcohol policy and alcohol consumption levels, measured via the AUDIT-C (Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test - Consumption). Controlled individual-level characteristics included sex, year level, major, GPA (grade point average), pocket money, smoking status, stress level, depressive thoughts, suicidal thoughts, and number of clubs/organizations. Controlled area-level characteristics included college type, number of students, number of faculty members, number of workers/administrators, and region.

RESULTS

Compared to students unaware of their school's campus alcohol policy, students who self-reported that their campuses allow drinking in outdoor spaces (β = 0.755 p = 0.010) or in all areas (β = 0.820, p = 0.044) had higher AUDIT-C scores. Students attending schools with a large number of students, males, freshmen, students with low GPA, students with high amounts of pocket money, and smokers also had higher alcohol consumption scores relative to their peers. Alcohol education experience in the form of lectures, mail, and/or campaigns were not associated with student alcohol consumption levels.

CONCLUSION

Our results suggest an association between self-reported campus alcohol policy and student alcohol consumption. College educators and administrators must be aware that relative to students unaware of their school's campus alcohol policy, students at colleges that allow drinking in outdoor spaces or all areas consume higher amounts of alcohol than their peers; even when area-level factors are controlled for.

TRIAL REGISTRATION

Yonsei IRB (IRB number: Y-2017-0084). https://irb.yonsei.ac.kr Date of registration: 01/2017. Date of enrolment of first participant to trial: 03/01/2017. Y-2017-0084.

A tutorial on individual participant data meta-analysis using Bayesian multilevel modeling to estimate alcohol intervention effects across heterogeneous studies

This paper provides a tutorial companion for the methodological approach implemented in Huh et al. (2015) that overcame two major challenges for individual participant data (IPD) meta-analysis. Specifically, we show how to validly combine data from heterogeneous studies with varying numbers of treatment arms, and how to analyze highly-skewed count outcomes with many zeroes (e.g., alcohol and substance use outcomes) to estimate overall effect sizes. These issues have important implications for the feasibility, applicability, and interpretation of IPD meta-analysis but have received little attention thus far in the applied research literature. We present a Bayesian multilevel modeling approach for combining multi-arm trials (i.e., those with two or more treatment groups) in a distribution-appropriate IPD analysis. Illustrative data come from Project INTEGRATE, an IPD meta-analysis study of brief motivational interventions to reduce excessive alcohol use and related harm among college students. Our approach preserves the original random allocation within studies, combines within-study estimates across all studies, overcomes between-study heterogeneity in trial design (i.e., number of treatment arms) and/or study-level missing data, and derives two related treatment outcomes in a multivariate IPD meta-analysis. This methodological approach is a favorable alternative to collapsing or excluding intervention groups within multi-arm trials, making it possible to directly compare multiple treatment arms in a one-step IPD meta-analysis. To facilitate application of the method, we provide annotated computer code in R along with the example data used in this tutorial.

Drinking to keep pace: A study of the moderating influence of extraversion on alcohol consumption similarity in drinking buddy dyads

Heavy drinking in college remains a concerning issue due to its association with both health and social risks. While modelling contributes to college students' alcohol use, little work has identified who might be most susceptible to modelling effects. Peterson, Morey, and Higgins (2005) found males high in extraversion were more susceptible than others to matching strangers' drinking levels in a lab-based social drinking context. We sought to replicate and extend these findings by examining the impact of extraversion on social matching of alcohol consumption levels of a drinking buddy in college students' real lives. First, a significant relationship between buddy and target drinking levels was predicted in dyadic drinking situations. Additionally, we hypothesized that target extraversion would positively moderate this buddy- target drinking levels relationship. Data from 149 college student targets (74% F) and their same-sex drinking buddy were collected through online questionnaires examining targets' extraversion levels, and the drinking levels and social drinking context of both dyad members through a 30-day Timeline Followback measure. Linear mixed-effects modelling confirmed the study's first social matching hypothesis, while also revealing that target extraversion positively moderated the relationship between buddy and target daily drinking levels in dyadic drinking contexts. Findings extend those of Peterson et al. (2005) to a real-world (vs. lab-based) context, modelling of a buddy's (vs. stranger's) drinking levels, and a sample including women (vs. all-male). Results provide novel information on extraversion's contributions to modelling of alcohol use that may guide useful modifications to personality-based interventions for reducing college student heavy drinking.

Depressive Symptoms and Drinking Outcomes: The Mediating Role of Drinking Motives and Protective Behavioral Strategies Among College Students

BACKGROUND

College students with depressive symptoms tend to engage in more hazardous drinking and experience more alcohol-related consequences to cope with their symptoms. Given the perceived tension reducing effects of alcohol among these students, it is important to explore how protective factors, such as protective behavioral strategies, account for the relationships among depressive symptoms, drinking motives, and alcohol-related outcomes.

OBJECTIVE

To examine the mediating role of drinking motives and protective behavioral strategies on the associations that depressive symptoms have with typical weekly alcohol consumption, hazardous drinking, and alcohol-related negative consequences in a sample of college student drinkers.

METHODS

Traditional age college students (n = 566, 73% women; 58% White, non-Hispanic) completed measures of depression, drinking motives, protective behavioral strategies, weekly alcohol use, hazardous drinking, and alcohol-related negative consequences.

RESULTS

Coping with depression motives and controlled consumption PBS explained the association between depression and weekly alcohol consumption and hazardous drinking whereas coping with depression motives and serious harm reduction PBS explained the depression-negative consequences relationship. Conformity motives and serious harm reduction PBS explained the association between depression and hazardous drinking and alcohol-related negative consequences.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings suggest that students with more depressive symptoms would benefit from clinical interventions tailored to address negative reinforcement drinking motives and, by extension, increase student utilization of PBS related to minimizing harm. Clinical and research implications are provided.

Change in college students' perceived parental permissibility of alcohol use and its relation to college drinking

College students who perceive their parents to hold permissive views about their alcohol use engage in heavier drinking. However, few studies have assessed perceived parental permissibility of alcohol use (PPP) longitudinally across the later college years, and few have assessed variation in changes in PPP and whether or not these changes differentially predict drinking. This study assessed whether PPP changed across college and used two approaches to determine whether PPP predicted binge drinking frequency and peak drinking. Data on college students' daily lives and risk behaviors were collected from 687 students (51% female) in a large university in the Northeast United States over four years. Perceived parental permissibility of alcohol use increased from the last year of high school through the third year of college with males reporting significantly higher PPP by the third year of college. From 12th grade through the third year of college, between-person differences in mean PPP were positively associated with binge drinking frequency and peak drinking, and patterns of PPP change differentially predicted both drinking outcomes through fourth year. These findings suggest that PPP is a dynamic construct that may evidence important developmental changes across college and the transition to adulthood. More broadly, the results indicate that aspects of the parent-child relationship continue to change after high school and may be important as they are linked with college student risk behaviors.

Trait mindfulness and protective strategies for alcohol use: Implications for college student drinking

INTRODUCTION

The use of Protective Behavioral Strategies (PBS) has been strongly linked with decreased experience of alcohol-related consequences, making them a potential target for intervention. Additionally, mindfulness is associated with decreased experience of alcohol-related consequences. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate a model of PBS as a mediator of the effect of mindfulness on alcohol-related consequences. Additionally, mindfulness as a moderator of the relationship between PBS and alcohol use and consequences was examined.

METHODS

College students (N=239) at a large South Central university completed self-report measures of demographics, alcohol use and consequences, use of PBS, and trait mindfulness.

RESULTS

Results indicated that both higher levels of mindfulness and using more PBS predicted decreased alcohol-related consequences and consumption, with PBS mediating both relationships (p<0.01). Those with higher levels of mindfulness were more likely to use PBS, with individuals using more PBS experiencing fewer alcohol-related consequences and consuming fewer drinks per week. Mindfulness moderated the relationship between PBS and consequences, with a significantly stronger negative relationship for those with lower levels of mindfulness.

CONCLUSIONS

Individuals who are higher in trait mindfulness are more likely to use PBS, which leads to a decrease in the experience of alcohol-related consequences. Furthermore, for individuals lower in mindfulness, low PBS use may lead to increased experience of alcohol consequences. Interventions that incorporate PBS may be most beneficial for students who are low in mindfulness and unlikely to engage in drinking control strategies.

When Do Friends Prevent Friends from Hooking Up Intoxicated? An Examination of Sex Differences and Hypothetical Intoxication in Peer Interventions

Despite the risks involved when mixing alcohol with casual sexual activity, the majority of college students engage in hookups, and the majority of those hookups involve alcohol. This study focused on the protective role college students' peers can play and the situational factors that might influence their willingness to intervene when a close friend is about to hook up intoxicated. Drawing on the theory of planned behavior (TPB), this study investigated differences in students' (N = 1270) attitudes, norms, perceived behavioral control, and intentions to persuade a close friend not to engage in a hypothetical drunken hookup using a 2 (friend sex) × 2 (participant sex) × 2 (sober/intoxicated) factorial design. Results indicated significant differences in the TPB variables. Participants intended to intervene with female friends, but not male friends, and women were more likely to intervene than men. Participants in the sober condition had stronger intentions to intervene than those in the intoxicated condition, but this effect was driven by increases in men's intentions when sober. Implications for theory and prevention programming are discussed.

Effects of Workplace Generalized and Sexual Harassment on Abusive Drinking Among First Year Male and Female College Students: Does Prior Drinking Experience Matter?

BACKGROUND

Workplace harassment, a known risk factor for adult drinking, is understudied in college samples, but may help explain observed gender differences in drinking patterns.

OBJECTIVE

We examine effects of sexual and generalized workplace harassment on changes in drinking behavior over the first semesters of college, and the extent to which these effects differ based on prematriculation drinking for men and women students.

METHOD

Data derive from two waves of a longitudinal study of eight Midwestern colleges and universities. Data were collected from 2080 employed students via a Web-based survey assessing sexual and generalized workplace harassment, stressful life events, drinking to intoxication, and binge drinking prior to freshman year (fall 2011) and approximately one year later (summer to fall 2012). At baseline, lifetime drinking status, frequency of alcohol consumption, and demographics were also assessed.

RESULTS

Linear-mixed modeling indicated that employed women students who were frequent drinkers prematriculation were at risk for high levels of drinking associated with workplace harassment, while men who were nondrinkers were most at risk of increasing problem drinking over time when exposed to workplace harassment.

CONCLUSIONS

Alcohol use prevention efforts directed towards employed students are needed both prior to and during college, to instruct students how to identify workplace harassment and cope in healthier ways with stressful workplace experiences. These efforts might be particularly useful in stemming problematic drinking among women who drink frequently prior to college, and preventing men who are nondrinkers upon college entry from initiating problematic drinking during subsequent enrollment years.

Overestimation of close friend drinking problems in the prediction of one's own drinking problems

BACKGROUND

Overestimation of the amount that other students drink is related to alcohol-related problems. Although beliefs concerning students' friends tend to be stronger predictors of drinking than beliefs regarding students generally, little research has focused on overestimation of friends' drinking-related problems.

OBJECTIVES

Test hypotheses that students overestimate a close friend's drinking-related problems and that such overestimation would relate to more frequent drinking and related problems.

METHOD

Participant/Friend pairs (N=55) completed online measures of drinking-related beliefs and behaviors.

RESULTS

Participants overestimated the alcohol-related problem severity experienced by their friends. Greater overestimation of friends' problems was related to greater participant alcohol-related problems and binge drinking.

CONCLUSIONS/IMPORTANCE

Cognitive distortions regarding a friend's drinking-related behaviors may be useful therapeutic targets.

Normative perceptions of alcohol-related consequences among college students

College students in the U.S. continue to drink in hazardous ways and experience a range of alcohol-related consequences. Personalized feedback interventions (PFIs), which often include normative components comparing personal drinking to that of similar peers, have been effective in reducing alcohol outcomes among college students. Though normative perceptions of the quantity and frequency of alcohol use have been examined in many studies, norms for alcohol-related consequences have received less attention. The current study examined self-other discrepancies (SODs) for alcohol-related consequences among college students. Participants overestimated how often alcohol-related consequences are experienced by other same-sex students on campus and rated consequences as more acceptable for others to experience than themselves. No differences in SODs were found between those who did and did not report alcohol use. Future studies should examine the efficacy of PFIs that incorporate normative feedback on alcohol-related consequences.

A daily process examination of episode-specific drinking to cope motivation among college students

OBJECTIVE

Theory suggests that state- and trait-like factors should interact in predicting drinking to cope (DTC) motivation, yet no research to date has demonstrated this at the drinking episode level of analysis. Thus, we examined whether daily variation in positive and negative affect and avoidance and active coping were associated with DTC motivation during discrete drinking episodes and whether these associations were moderated by tension-reduction expectancies and other person-level risk factors.

METHODS

Using a secure website, 722 college student drinkers completed a one-time survey regarding their tension reduction expectancies and then reported daily for 30 days on their affect, coping strategies, drinking behaviors and motives for drinking.

RESULTS

Individuals reported higher levels of DTC motivation on days when negative affect and avoidance coping were high and positive affect was low. We found only little support for the predicted interactive effects among the day- and person-level predictors.

CONCLUSION

Our results support the state and trait conceptualizations of DTC motivation and provide evidence for the antecedent roles of proximal levels of daily affect and avoidance coping. Our inconsistent results for interaction effects including day-level antecedents raise the possibility that some of these synergistic processes might not generalize across level of analysis.

Social anxiety and heavy situational drinking: coping and conformity motives as multiple mediators

INTRODUCTION

Individuals with clinically elevated social anxiety are at greater risk for alcohol use disorder, and the relation between social anxiety and drinking problems is at least partially accounted for by drinking more in negative emotional (e.g., feeling sad or angry) and personal/intimate (e.g., before sexual intercourse) situations. Identification of cognitive/motivational factors related to drinking in these high-risk situations could inform the development of treatment and prevention interventions for these high-risk drinkers.

METHOD

The current cross-sectional study examined the mediating effect of drinking motives on the relationship between social anxiety and drinking these high-risk situations among undergraduates (N=232).

RESULTS

Clinically elevated social anxiety was associated with greater coping and conformity motives. Both coping and conformity motives mediated the relation between social anxiety and heavier alcohol consumption in negative emotional and personal/intimate contexts.

CONCLUSIONS

Multiple mediation analyses indicated that these motives work additively to mediate the social anxiety-drinking situations relationship, such that heavy situational drinking among undergraduates with clinically elevated social anxiety can be jointly attributed to desire to cope with negative affect and to avoid social scrutiny.

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

OBJECTIVE

Multi-component parent-based interventions (PBIs) provide a promising avenue for targeting alcohol use and related consequences in college students. Parents of college-aged children can have a significant influence on their children's alcohol use decisions. However, parents tend to underestimate their own child's alcohol use and overestimate other similar parents' approval of student drinking. These misperceptions could have important implications for parents' own attitudes and alcohol-related communication with their student. Targeting these misperceptions through normative feedback could help promote greater and more in-depth alcohol-related communication. The present study examines the potential efficacy of web-based alcohol-related normative feedback for parents of college students.

METHOD

A sample of 144 parents of college students received web-based normative feedback about students' alcohol use and approval, as well as other same-college parents' alcohol approval. Parents completed measures of perceived student alcohol use, student alcohol approval, other-parent alcohol approval, and intentions to discuss alcohol use both pre- and post-normative feedback.

RESULTS

Post-feedback, parents reported stronger intentions to talk to their student about alcohol, were less confident in their knowledge of their students' alcohol use, and believed that their student drank in greater quantity and more frequently than pre-feedback. Parents also perceived other parents to be less approving of alcohol use after viewing normative feedback.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings provide preliminary support for the use of web-based normative feedback for parents of college students. Given these promising results, further research developing and testing this approach merits attention.

Maternal and peer influences on drinking among Latino college students

Previous research on college drinking has paid little attention to Latino students. Social development models (Catalano, Hawkins, & Miller, 1992) suggest that protective influences in one domain (e.g., mothers) can offset negative influences from other domains (e.g., peers) though this possibility has not been explored with respect to Latino college student drinking. The present study had two aims: 1) to determine whether four specific maternal influences (monitoring, positive communication, permissiveness, and modeling) and peer descriptive norms were associated with college drinking and consequences among Latino students, and 2) to determine whether maternal influences moderated the effect of peer norms on college drinking and consequences. A sample of 362 first-year students (69.9% female) completed an online assessment regarding their mothers' monitoring, positive communication, permissiveness, and modeling, peer descriptive norms, and drinking and related consequences. Main effects and two-way interactions (mother×peer) were assessed using separate hierarchical regression models for three separate outcomes: peak drinking, weekly drinking, and alcohol-related consequences. Maternal permissiveness and peer descriptive norms were positively associated with drinking and consequences. Maternal communication was negatively associated with consequences. Findings indicate that previously identified maternal and peer influences are also relevant for Latino students and highlight future directions that would address the dearth of research in this area.

Impulsivity and alcohol-related risk among college students: examining urgency, sensation seeking and the moderating influence of beliefs about alcohol's role in the college experience

The personality trait of impulsivity is predictive of heavy drinking and consequences among college students. The current study examined how impulsivity-measured via positive urgency, negative urgency, and sensation seeking-and a person's beliefs about the role alcohol plays in the college experience relate to drinking and consequences in a sample of 470 college students (mean age=19 years, 61.3% female, 59.8% White). In support of the hypotheses, sensation seeking independently predicted greater drinking, and both positive urgency and negative urgency predicted greater experience of alcohol-related negative consequences after controlling for consumption level. Moreover, alcohol beliefs moderated the relationship between impulsivity types and alcohol outcomes. Among students high (versus low) in sensation seeking, strong beliefs about alcohol's role in college life were related to significantly greater drinking, and among students high (versus low) in negative urgency, endorsing strong beliefs about alcohol's role in college life were related to greater levels of alcohol-related negative consequences. Overall, findings inform college prevention efforts by highlighting the need to distinguish unique facets of impulsivity and examine how they intersect with students' beliefs about alcohol in college.

Identification of trajectories of social network composition change and the relationship to alcohol consumption and norms

BACKGROUND

College drinking is embedded in a social context, drawing attention to the effects of social network composition on consumption. The presence of heavy drinking friends in social networks predicts later alcohol misuse, but little is known about how the composition of one's social network composition changes over time. This study identified changes in social network composition in a sample of at-risk students and examined the relationship among network trajectories, alcohol consumption, and descriptive norms.

METHODS

Participants were 503 students (64% male) mandated to participate in an alcohol prevention intervention for residence hall alcohol policy violations. At baseline, students provided self-report data about alcohol consumption, perceived peer drinking norms, and peer alcohol involvement. Parallel assessments were completed at 6- and 12-months post-baseline.

RESULTS

Growth-mixture models identified four groups of individuals with similar levels of heavy drinkers in their social networks. The majority of students had stable or decreasing numbers of heavy drinkers in their networks across the study, whereas two groups reported relatively stable densities of heavy drinkers from baseline to 6-months and increasing densities from 6- to 12-months. At baseline, the four groups were generally equivalent on consumption and normative perceptions. At 6- and 12-months, however, the groups differed significantly on consumption and norms.

CONCLUSIONS

These results suggest that changes in the number of heavy drinkers in college students' social networks may have significant implications for at-risk drinking.

Predictors of Interest in an Alcohol Reduction Clinical Trial of Naltrexone among Undergraduates

Background

We tested predictors of interest in a clinical trial of naltrexone plus counseling for heavy drinking reduction in young adults using a web survey. Respondents could indicate interest in the clinical trial at the conclusion of the survey.

Methods

A random sample of university students completed the survey (N = 584, 60% female). Data were collected in October-November 2010.

Results

Among past-year drinkers (n = 411), 22.6% (n =93) indicated interest. Equivalent levels of interest were found among past-year heavy drinkers. Non-white race and current cigarette smoking predicted interest. Alcohol-related negative consequences score was a trend-level predictor in the full regression model, but a significant predictor in a reduced model.

Conclusions

Non-white students, smokers and those with a high number of negative consequences may be more amenable to drinking reduction via medication and counseling. These findings could facilitate efforts of researchers, administrators, counselors and other professionals to tailor drinking reduction messages and facilitate treatment engagement by undergraduates.