A brief Ecological Momentary Intervention to reduce alcohol use and alcohol related harm in new college students.

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Young adults have the highest alcohol consumption of any age group. Within this high risk age group, university students stand out, consuming more alcohol than their non-university attending peers. As a result, university students not only have a higher incidence of alcohol use disorders, but also report a higher incidence of harm resulting from alcohol. A number of factors have been implicated in this increase in alcohol use at university, however, new research suggests that drinking during certain events (e.g., Orientation Week) may have a flow on effect and influence the number of drinks students consume throughout the year. The primary aim of the research project is to reduce overall alcohol consumption by university students (i.e., alcohol consumed during the academic year) by reducing the heavy drinking that characterises students drinking behaviour during O’Week. We hypothesize that an ecological momentary intervention (EMI) aimed at Orientation Week will reduce the amount of alcohol use throughout both Orientation Week and throughout the year. Participants will be randomly assigned to either an Ecological Momentary Intervention (EMA) or EMA-EMI condition. Participants in the EMA condition will receive assessment text messages during O’Week to report their alcohol consumption from the previous 3 days. Outside of these intensive periods, participants will receive a text message every second Sunday asking them to report their alcohol consumption for the previous 3 days. Participants in the EMA-EMI condition [i.e., assessment + intervention] will receive EMA text messages and EMI text messages on four days during O’Week. The content of the EMI text messages will focus on the potential social implications of drinking too much.

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