NCT01546025

Brief Alcohol Intervention for School-to-Work Transitions

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 168 (actual)
• Sponsor: Brown University · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 17 Years – 20 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

This is a 2-year research project to test the efficacy of brief motivational intervention for reducing heavy alcohol use in young adults transitioning out of high school. Participation occurs within 3 months prior to graduation or within 1 year following graduation or dropout from high school. Heavy drinkers ages 17-20 will be randomly assigned to receive one session of BMI or one session of relaxation training. All participants complete identical assessments at baseline and immediately post-intervention (during session 1). Participants also complete in-person 6-week and 3-month follow up assessments to evaluate intervention effects. Study aims involve: a) testing the comparative efficacy of BMI; b) identifying moderators (person-level predictors) of intervention response; and c) identifying mediators (mechanisms) of intervention effects, that is, how BMI exerts its effect on outcomes.

Detailed description

This study tested the efficacy of a single session of BMI for reducing heavy drinking and related adverse consequences among underage young adult drinkers not attending a 4-year college or university. We designed the intervention to be delivered proximal to the transition out of high school (with or without graduation), because such periods of transition and discontinuity in the life course present opportunities to positively alter developmental paths (Masten et al., 2009). Thus, interventions timed to co-occur with naturalistic transition points may have great potential for decreasing drinking trajectories or preventing harmful escalations in trajectories going forward. To increase the applicability of our findings to the heterogeneous population of community-dwelling young adults, our recruitment targeted a purposefully inclusive "non-4-year-college" population. We hypothesized that, compared to a time and attention-matched control condition (i.e., relaxation training \[REL\]), BMI would result in significantly reduced heavy drinking and reduced adverse consequences of alcohol use at 6-week and 3-month follow-up.

Conditions

• Binge Drinking

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Brief Motivational Counseling	One hour session of brief motivational counseling focused on reduction of heavy drinking.
BEHAVIORAL	Relaxation training	One hour training in relaxation techniques

Timeline

• Start date: 2010-06-01
• Primary completion: 2011-10-01
• Completion: 2011-10-01
• First posted: 2012-03-07
• Last updated: 2025-06-12
• Results posted: 2025-03-05