What is the Active Ingredient in Personalized Feedback Interventions for Problem Drinkers? A Randomized Controlled Trial

The major objective of this project is to conduct a randomized controlled trial comparing the impact of the normative feedback and other personalized feedback components of the Check Your Drinking (CYD) Internet-based intervention in the general population. Eligible problem drinking participants will be randomly assigned to one of four conditions in a 2 by 2 design - to receive just the normative feedback component of the CYD intervention, just the other personalized feedback information, to a no intervention control condition, or to receive the full CYD intervention. The no intervention control condition will not be sent any intervention materials but will instead be sent a list of the different components of the CYD feedback and will be asked to think about how useful they would find each of them. All participants will be followed-up at 3 months.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Problem Drinking
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Check Your Drinking (CYD) personalized feedback intervention

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 804
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• Canada
  • Ontario
    • Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 2S1
      • Centre for Addiction and Mental Health

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 19 years and older (Adult, Older Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• problem drinkers as measured by an AUDIT score of 8 or more

Exclusion Criteria:

• none

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Treatment
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Factorial Assignment
• Masking: Single

Number of Arms

4

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Full personalized feedback; Participant provided with the full CYD personalized feedback summary.	Behavioral: Check Your Drinking (CYD) personalized feedback intervention; The CYD provides problem drinkers with a personalized summary of their drinking that compares his or her drinking with that of the general population. The CYD also provides an assessment of the severity of the person's drinking problem.
Experimental: Only normative feedback; Participant provided with just the normative feedback component of the CYD personalized feedback summary.	Behavioral: Check Your Drinking (CYD) personalized feedback intervention; The CYD provides problem drinkers with a personalized summary of their drinking that compares his or her drinking with that of the general population. The CYD also provides an assessment of the severity of the person's drinking problem.
Experimental: Just other personalized feedback; Participant provided with all the other personalized feedback components of the CYD intervention (i.e., no normative feedback).	Behavioral: Check Your Drinking (CYD) personalized feedback intervention; The CYD provides problem drinkers with a personalized summary of their drinking that compares his or her drinking with that of the general population. The CYD also provides an assessment of the severity of the person's drinking problem.
No Intervention: No intervention control; Participant provided with a list describing the components of the CYD intervention but not provided any personalized feedback.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Drinks in a typical week	Number of drinks in a typical week	3 months
AUDIT-C score	Composite measure of three drinking items - frequency of drinking, drinks per drinking day, frequency of 5+ drinking days	3 months
Highest number of drinks on one occasion	Highest number of drinks on one occasion in the past 3 months	3 months

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: John Cunningham, Ph.D., Centre for Addiction and Mental Health

Publications and helpful links

General Publications

• Cunningham JA, Murphy M, Hendershot CS. Treatment dismantling pilot study to identify the active ingredients in personalized feedback interventions for hazardous alcohol use: randomized controlled trial. Addict Sci Clin Pract. 2014 Dec 10;10(1):1. doi: 10.1186/s13722-014-0022-1.

Helpful Links

• Information about research at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Canada's largest mental health and addiction teaching

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start: May 1, 2012
• Primary Completion (Actual): June 1, 2013
• Study Completion (Actual): September 1, 2013

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: May 28, 2012
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: May 29, 2012
• First Posted (Estimate): May 31, 2012

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Estimate): December 9, 2014
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: December 5, 2014
• Last Verified: December 1, 2014

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Other Study ID Numbers: 001/2012