The University of New Mexico’s Center on Alcohol, Substance Abuse, and Addictions (CASAA) was awarded a $2.05 million grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism of the National Institutes of Health to develop and evaluate an interactive website targeted at reducing binge drinking on college campuses.
The four-year, two-phase project will be conducted with entering freshmen at colleges in New Mexico and Colorado. Colorado universities have recently had several high-profile student alcohol-related tragedies.
"People are aware of college binge drinking and are trying a lot of different things to get kids to stop binge drinking," said Dr. Gill Woodall, senior research scientist at CASAA and principal investigator on the project. "Binge drinking among college students has been better described than influenced by prevention researchers. Unfortunately, many programs that focus on helping students do not evaluate their own effectiveness."
"The goals of this program are to not only provide a positive influence, but to provide a comprehensive test of the impact that the website program has on the reduction of binge drinking behaviors. It’s an application we’ve been working on for some time."
The Internet intervention will employ motivational interviewing and normative feedback principles in its design and will contain six modules that are oriented toward the prevention of binge drinking by college students.
The core module in the Motivational Interviewing-Normative Feedback website (MI-NF) will assess participant alcohol use and normative perception. Based on the participant's response, the website will provide corrective normative feedback and a menu of advice and options for reduction of risky alcohol consumption patterns. There will be at least six modules says Woodall.
Taking advantage of the average college student’s unlimited Internet access, the program aims to minimize many of the obstacles that traditional intervention programs have had to address, such as physical location, costs per participant and comprehensiveness.
In addition, the anonymity of the medium promotes honest involvement from participants, making for a more accurate and beneficial program. Students will also be paid incentives for completing web modules and for their participation.
"We’ll use theoretical principles and solicit comments from students to develop concepts we know are useful,” said Woodall. “We will start from the ground up with user needs. We feel this will set this project apart from others. It’s a unique and innovative way to approach the problem."
The experts involved with this new program are optimistic about its effectiveness. “All the pieces have come together for this project, and we are truly looking forward to the evaluation stage. I can see it making a great impact on future students,” said Aimee Giese, creative director for Klein Buendel, the design firm providing the multimedia components of the program.
Klein Buendel is a health education, multimedia development and graphic
design firm based in Golden, Colo. To learn more about Klein Buendel visit their Web site at: Klein Buendel or call Bryan Giese at (720) 216-6679.
The Center on Alcoholism, Substance Abuse, and Addictions at the University of New Mexico is a university-wide strategic research center focused on multi-disciplinary research on addictions. More information about CASAA and its programs can be found at: CASAA.
Contacts: Gill Woodall, (505) 925-2300; Steve Carr, (505) 277-1821
Posted by scarr at October 19, 2004 01:16 PM