Project MADD - NIH Underage DUI and Ride

Examining an Intervention to Reduce Underage DUI and Riding With Impaired Drivers

Project MADD was designed to attempt to curb the alarming trends related to drunk driving and to move the field forward by testing a brief parent-intervention's ability to change adolescents' drinking, impaired driving, and riding with impaired driver behaviors. The aim of this project is to provide an easy-to-implement and low-cost alternative parent-based intervention that can be widely disseminated to address this important public health problem.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Underage Drinking; Driving Under the Influence; Drinking, Teen
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: MADD Materials; Behavioral: Surgeon General Materials

Detailed Description

Drunk driving is a major public health problem. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported nearly 10,000 people died in alcohol-related crashes in the U.S. in 2014. The problem is further magnified when one considers that each year over 1.3 million drivers in the U.S. are arrested for alcohol-impaired driving. As alarming as these statistics are they pale by comparison to estimates indicating that they only represent 1% of the 121 million self-reported episodes of alcohol-impaired driving among U.S. drivers each year. The proposed research will attempt to curb these alarming trends and move the field forward by conducting a randomized controlled trial testing a brief parent intervention's ability to change adolescents' drinking, impaired driving, and riding with impaired driver behaviors. Prior brief parent-based interventions fro this lab have provided sufficient preliminary evidence of participation, communication, and efficacy for changing under-age drinking to warrant a large-scale comprehensive study. The study will use an extremely rigorous design that meets the Society for Prevention Research Criteria for Efficacy as described in Flay et al., a nationally representative sample assessed at 3-waves (baseline, 6 mo. and 12 mo.) to examine generalizability and sustained effects, and an oversampled Hispanic/Latino subgroup to examine the parent-intervention's potential to reduce a health disparity in an underserved population. The aims are as follows: Aim 1: Evaluate the efficacy of the parent intervention (short and long term); Aim 2: Examine mediators of the PBI that directly influence drinking, impaired driving, and riding with impaired driver behaviors; and Aim 3: Identify moderators to help inform future tailoring and improvement in intervention effectiveness. To the extent that the research is successful, it will provide an easy to implement and low cost alternative that can be widely disseminated to address this important public health problem.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 2352
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United States
  • Pennsylvania
    • University Park, Pennsylvania, United States, 16802
      • Penn State University

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 15 years to 18 years (Child, Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• Parent and teen both consent (forming a dyad testing unit); They are part of GfK's KnowledgePanel pool of participants

Exclusion Criteria:

• Outside of the teen age range

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Prevention
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: Single

Number of Arms

3

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
No Intervention: Control; TAU
Experimental: MADD Materials; Handbook developed by MADD and the PI to guide parents in discussing underage drinking, behaviors, and consequences with their teens	Behavioral: MADD Materials; Handbook developed by MADD and the PI to guide parents in discussing underage drinking, behaviors, and consequences with their teens
Experimental: Surgeon General Materials; Information published by the Surgeon General about teens and drinking	Behavioral: Surgeon General Materials; Information published by the Surgeon General about teens and drinking

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Typical Weekend Drinking (DDQ)	Typical weekend drinking was assessed using the Daily Drinking Questionnaire (DDQ; Collins et al., 1985), which asked teens to indicate the number of drinks they consumed on a typical Friday and Saturday during the past 6 months. These two items were summed to create the number of typical weekend drinks. Higher scores indicate the teen consumed a higher number of drinks on a typical weekend.	Baseline, 6 month follow-up, and 12 month follow-up
Declining to Ride With Impaired Drivers	Declining riding with impaired drivers was assessed with two items adapted from Hultgren et al (2018). Teens were asked to indicate the number of times they declined a ride from a driver that consumed alcohol and the number of times they declined a ride from a driver that consumed any drug other than alcohol (e.g., marijuana, opioids) in the past 6 months. Responses were summed to indicate the number of times they declined rides from impaired drivers in the past 6 months. Higher scores indicate the participant declined more rides from impaired drivers.	T4 (12-months post-baseline)

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Willingness to Ride in a Car With an Impaired Driver	Willingness to ride in a car with an impaired driver was assessed with two items adapted from Hultgren et al. (2018). Teens responded using a 7-point scale that ranged from (0) Strongly disagree to (6) Strongly agree on their level of agreement to the following statements, "I am willing to be a passenger in a vehicle when the driver has consumed alcohol." and "I am willing to be a passenger in a vehicle when the driver has consumed any drug other than alcohol (e.g., marijuana, ecstasy, opioids).". Responses were averaged to create a mean score. Higher scores indicate the participant is more willing to be a passenger in a car with an impaired driver.	Baseline, 6 month follow-up, and 12 month follow-up

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Penn State University
• Collaborators: National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA); National Institutes of Health (NIH)
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Robert Turrisi, Ph.D., Penn State University

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): November 17, 2017
• Primary Completion (Actual): April 30, 2022
• Study Completion (Actual): April 30, 2022

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: March 30, 2018
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: April 13, 2018
• First Posted (Actual): April 24, 2018

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): June 29, 2023
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: June 9, 2023
• Last Verified: June 1, 2023

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Additional Relevant MeSH Terms: Drinking Behavior; Alcohol Drinking; Underage Drinking
• Other Study ID Numbers: 187458; R01AA025301 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: NO

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No