Personalized Feedback After Alcohol Health Education for Members of Greek Life (GREEK Study)

April 28, 2023 updated by: Abby Braitman

Heavy episodic alcohol use within the college student population is widespread, creating problems for student drinkers, their peers, and their institutions. Negative consequences from heavy alcohol use can be mild (e.g., hangovers, missed classes), to severe (e.g., assault, even death). Although online interventions targeting college student drinking reduce alcohol consumption and associated problems, they are not as effective as in-person interventions. Online interventions are cost-effective, offer privacy, reduce stigma, and may reach individuals who would otherwise not receive treatment. In a recently completed randomized, controlled trial, an emailed booster with personalized feedback improved the efficacy of a popular online intervention. A second randomized, controlled trial confirmed efficacy for students of legal drinking age for a longer timeline. Although promising, the booster incorporated in the study needs further empirical refinement.

The current project seeks to build on past progress by further developing and refining the booster. In particular, the current project is an extension of previous work by expanding the investigation into complete social networks (students involved in Greek life). This booster contains feedback about alcohol use tailored to the recipient, and will be emailed 2, 6, 10, and 14 weeks after baseline (experimental condition), or not at all (control condition). This study will be conducted specifically with students who are members of fraternities or sororities at ODU (specifically, those in the organizations that agree to participate). This population engages in heavy alcohol use so is ideal for an alcohol intervention. Members of fraternities and sororities (i.e., "Greek life") engage in more frequent drinking, consume more when drinking, and have higher peak drinking occasions than students not involved in Greek life. We aim to administer the intervention and associated booster among complete networks of Greek organizations to examine how the intervention and booster and progress through social networks.

Study Overview

Status

Enrolling by invitation

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Anticipated)

250

Phase

  • Phase 2
  • Phase 1

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

  • United States
    • Virginia
      • Norfolk, Virginia, United States, 23529
        • Old Dominion University

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

18 years and older (Adult, Older Adult)

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Participants must be at least 18 years old so that they can legally consent to participate.
  • Participants must be an undergraduate student at the host institution and a member of a participating fraternitiy or sorority.

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Under 18 years of age
  • Not a member of a participating fraternity or sorority at the host institution.

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

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

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Placebo Comparator: Intervention-only Control
Participants navigate through e-checkup to go, the well-established alcohol intervention. Any follow-up emails sent to them later contain only a reminder to participate in follow-up surveys.
Behavioral: e-checkup to go
The e-checkup to go alcohol program is designed to motivate individuals to reduce their alcohol consumption using personalized information about their own use and risk factors. The program is a combination of several components including alcohol education, personalized feedback, attitude-focused strategies, and skills training. It is self-guided and requires no face-to-face time with an administrator. It provides tailored feedback regarding quantity and frequency of alcohol use, normative comparisons, physical health information, amount and percent of income spent on alcohol, negative consequences feedback, explanation and advice for how to reach their goals, and resources.
Experimental: Intervention plus delayed feedback booster
Participants navigate through e-checkup to go, the well-established alcohol intervention, then receive a series of feedback booster emails. It contains a reminder to participate in follow-up surveys, plus personalized feedback based on participant-reported perceived alcohol norms, actual alcohol norms, their own use, and harm reduction strategies.
Behavioral: e-checkup to go
The e-checkup to go alcohol program is designed to motivate individuals to reduce their alcohol consumption using personalized information about their own use and risk factors. The program is a combination of several components including alcohol education, personalized feedback, attitude-focused strategies, and skills training. It is self-guided and requires no face-to-face time with an administrator. It provides tailored feedback regarding quantity and frequency of alcohol use, normative comparisons, physical health information, amount and percent of income spent on alcohol, negative consequences feedback, explanation and advice for how to reach their goals, and resources.
Behavioral: Delayed feedback booster
Booster emails will contain normative feedback indicating average consumption for students at the same institution by sex, their perceptions of student drinkers at the same institution, their own reported consumption, and reminders of strategies they can use to protect themselves from alcohol-related harm.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Alcohol consumption
Time Frame: past 30 days
Participant self-reported number of standard drinks consumed by participant over a typical week for the past 30 days.
past 30 days

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Alcohol-Related Consequences
Time Frame: past 30 days
Participant self-report on the Brief-Young Adult Alcohol Consequences Questionnaire (B-YAACQ; Kahler et al., 2005), which assesses alcohol-related problems experienced by the participant. Total scores are created by summing all individual items, and range from 0 to 24, with higher values representing more problems experienced (i.e., worse outcomes).
past 30 days

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Abby Braitman

Collaborators

National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

April 6, 2022

Primary Completion (Actual)

December 8, 2022

Study Completion (Anticipated)

May 31, 2023

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

October 25, 2021

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

October 25, 2021

First Posted (Actual)

November 4, 2021

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

May 3, 2023

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

April 28, 2023

Last Verified

April 1, 2023

More Information

Terms related to this study

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • 21-164
  • K01AA023849 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

UNDECIDED

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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