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Completed Not applicable Interventional Accepts healthy volunteers Results available

Alcohol Intervention for First Year College Students

ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT03750838

Public ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT03750838. 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.

ClinicalTrials.gov public records Last synced Sep 6, 2026, 8:28 AM EDT

Data is sourced from official ClinicalTrials.gov public API records. Always review the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for the latest information.

Official title

Refining and Piloting a Text Messaging Intervention to Delay Alcohol Initiation and Reduce Alcohol Use Escalation Among Abstainer and Lighter Drinker College Students

Brief summary

Reproduced verbatim from the official ClinicalTrials.gov record. Not medical advice.

While a large focus of research on U.S. college drinking has focused on the prevalence of and problems related to heavy-episodic drinking, less has focused on college students who are either abstainers or lighter drinkers (i.e., for men, drinking 4 or fewer drinks in two hours and 14 or fewer drinks per week; and for women drinking 3 or fewer in two hours and 7 or fewer drinks per week). Over 40% percent of college students ages 18-22 do not report drinking in the past month with only half of those engaging in regular heavy-episodic drinking. Research suggests that a significant proportion of students who were abstinent or light drinkers prior to and upon entering college initiate drinking and progress to becoming heavy-episodic drinkers. This provides evidence that the first few months of college is a high-risk time for initiating both drinking and heavy-episodic drinking and that delaying the onset of heavy-episodic drinking among light drinkers and abstainers should lead to reduced harms throughout the college years and young adulthood. Mobile phone-based interventions are an innovative method for reaching young people and have been established as an empirical approach towards addressing health issues, including alcohol use. The ultimate goal of this proposal is to develop, refine and pilot a text message (TM) intervention for abstainer and lighter drinking first year college students with the ultimate goal of delaying alcohol initiation and/or reducing alcohol use escalation. An iterative process of focus groups, intervention content development, and user feedback focused on the unique experiences of abstainers and lighter drinkers will inform the TM Intervention to be delivered in a pilot study with 6 weeks of TMs. The pilot study will include a 6 week post-intervention assessment, and 3, 6, and 9 month follow-ups among 100 incoming first year abstainer and lighter drinker college students. Given that reducing young adults' and college students' engagement in excessive alcohol use has been listed as a major objective of Healthy People 2020 and a key priority of NIAAA, an intervention that focuses on delaying alcohol initiation and escalation into higher-risk alcohol use among abstainer and lighter drinkers could make important strides to achieving this goal.

Study identification

NCT ID
NCT03750838
Recruitment status
Completed
Study type
Interventional
Phase
Not applicable
Enrollment
99 participants

Conditions and interventions

Interventions

Behavioral

Eligibility (public fields only)

Age range
18 Years to 19 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
May 31, 2021
Primary completion
Jul 31, 2023
Completion
Jul 31, 2023
Last update posted
Jan 18, 2024

2021 – 2023

United States locations

U.S. sites
1
U.S. states
1
U.S. cities
1
Facility City State ZIP Site status
Dana Fort Worth Texas 76107

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 NCT03750838, 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 Jan 18, 2024 · Synced Sep 6, 2026

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Open the official record

The complete protocol, eligibility criteria, and contact information for NCT03750838 live on ClinicalTrials.gov.

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