ALCOHOL RISK PREVENTION IN A NATIONAL FRATERNITY

Westat, Inc., Rockville MD

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Abstract

The primary purpose of the proposed investigation is to conduct a rigorous examination of the impact of alcohol risk behavior prevention trainings on alcohol consumption and related risk behaviors in student members of a national college fraternity. Each of 84 national college fraternity chapters of Delta Upsilon will be randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions: a standard intervention (SI) group, an enhanced intervention (EI) group, or to a waiting list control (WLC) condition. Together, these chapters will yield a sample of approximately 3,200 fraternity members. Students in the SI group will receive a baseline intervention only. Members in the EI group will receive the baseline intervention, but will also receive booster intervention sessions 3, 6, and 12 months later. Students in the WLC group will participate in research assessments only. The study sample will include all Freshmen, Sophomore and Junior fraternity members. Student assessments, using computer-assisted self-interviewing with audio enhancement (audio-CASI) procedures, will be conducted at baseline, and at 3, 6, 12, and 24 months after members in fraternity chapters in the experimental conditions receive the baseline intervention. The standard and enhanced interventions are predicted to significantly reduce students' levels of binge drinking, BACs achieved when binge drinking, BACs achieved on "typical drinking occasions," and overall reductions in other alcohol-related risk behavior. The enhanced intervention is expected to be superior in impacting students' levels of alcohol use and related risk behavior, and in sustaining intervention effects over time. The enhanced intervention is expected to provide this superior performance, in large part, due to its employing in practice many basic concepts from the Relapse Prevention model, an approach which has been shown in numerous studies to help sustain clients' achievements in substance abuse treatment. With this unique opportunity available to the study team, namely being able to randomly assign 84 fraternity chapters on a national scale to intervention groups or a waiting list control condition, the authors expect to be able to provide a definitive study on the longitudinal effects of alcohol risk intervention trainings with fraternity members. If this relatively inexpensive and easily implemented intervention is successful in reducing student levels of alcohol use and related risk behavior, and in sustaining intervention effects over time, as the authors anticipate, this program could easily be implemented on a large scale in other fraternities nationally, and in other high-risk campus settings.