Examining Expectancy Challenges to Prevent Nonmedical Prescription Stimulant Use
Public ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT03648684. Field values are reproduced from the official study page; the official ClinicalTrials.gov record remains the source of truth for eligibility, enrollment, and contact information.
Data is sourced from official ClinicalTrials.gov public API records. Always review the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for the latest information.
Brief summary
Reproduced verbatim from the official ClinicalTrials.gov record. Not medical advice.
Nonmedical prescription stimulant use (NPS) is commonly reported among college students for cognitive enhancement purposes, though it is associated with numerous negative psychological and physical consequences. Despite increasingly high prevalence rates and widespread acknowledgement of the need for efficacious interventions, little is known regarding how to prevent or treat this behavior. An intervention that targets cognitive enhancement motives and expectancy effects related to NPS may be particularly effective in light of recent research purporting limited evidence for meaningful NPS-related cognitive improvements among individuals without legitimate attention deficits. The primary objective of this proposal is to examine the efficacy of an intervention that successfully prevents NPS among college students by modifying expectations for NPS-related effects, while at the same time providing alternative means of enhancing cognition and arousal. Participants will be 126 stimulant-naïve college students who report a combination of risk factors for NPS. They will be randomized to one of three treatment conditions: a placebo-based expectancy challenge intervention that solely aims to modify expectancies related to NPS, a caffeine-based expectancy challenge intervention that includes expectancy modification combined with a safer alternative for cognitive enhancement, or a control group. Multilevel mixed modeling and survival analyses will be used to 1) examine changes in NPS-related expectancy effects across a 6-month follow-up period, and 2) assess incidence of NPS over the follow-up period, respectively, across the three groups. It is hypothesized that both expectancy challenge interventions will successfully modify expectancies compared to the control group and that they will be maintained over the follow-up period. It is also expected that the caffeine-based intervention will most successfully prevent NPS through a combination of expectancy modification and encouraging safe use of caffeine rather than prescription stimulants to achieve desired outcomes. Mediational analyses will also be employed to assess whether changes in expectancy effects via the interventions are responsible for differences in initiation rates between groups. The results of this project will facilitate the development of larger-scale prevention efforts to target the high rate of NPS on college campuses.
Study identification
- NCT ID
- NCT03648684
- Recruitment status
- Completed
- Study type
- Interventional
- Phase
- Not applicable
- Enrollment
- 131 participants
Conditions and interventions
Conditions
Interventions
- Caffeine-Based Expectancy Challenge Behavioral
- Placebo-Based Expectancy Challenge Behavioral
Behavioral
Eligibility (public fields only)
- Age range
- 18 Years to 25 Years
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- Accepts healthy volunteers
This page does not interpret eligibility. Detailed inclusion and exclusion criteria are on the official ClinicalTrials.gov record.
Study timeline
- Start date
- Sep 3, 2018
- Primary completion
- Sep 30, 2020
- Completion
- Sep 30, 2020
- Last update posted
- Nov 3, 2020
2018 – 2020
United States locations
- U.S. sites
- 1
- U.S. states
- 1
- U.S. cities
- 1
| Facility | City | State | ZIP | Site status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| University of Wyoming | Laramie | Wyoming | 82071 | — |
Site contact phone numbers, emails, and investigator names are intentionally not displayed here. Open the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for site contact information.
About this trial record page
- What this page shows
- Public field values for ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT03648684, including study identification, conditions, interventions, eligibility (age, sex, healthy volunteer), timeline, and U.S. site list.
- What this page does not do
- No medical advice, eligibility judgments, treatment recommendations, study quality scoring, or AI-generated medical summaries. No site contact phone numbers, emails, or investigator names.
- Where the data comes from
- Sourced from the official ClinicalTrials.gov public API. The official record is the source of truth.
- Last refresh
- Last update posted Nov 3, 2020 · Synced Sep 2, 2026
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Open the official record
The complete protocol, eligibility criteria, and contact information for NCT03648684 live on ClinicalTrials.gov.