Project Summary
Underage drinking on college campuses remains a serious public health issue. Research suggests that Parent-
Based Interventions (PBIs) that target parents of incoming students can be powerful adjuncts to existing
student-level alcohol programs. Although Turissi’s Parent Handbook is the only PBI recommended by the
NIAAA to reduce alcohol risk during the transition into college, this “gold standard” PBI has demonstrated
only modest effects on student drinking in trials and has relied on monetary incentives to facilitate parent
engagement, which do not translate to effective real-world implementation. As such, it is imperative to develop
effective PBIs that can be implemented easily and without incentives. One effective motivational PBI
component identified by our lab is personalized normative feedback (PNF) designed to correct parents’
misperceptions about first-year student drinking, other parents’ approval for such drinking, and alcohol
communication. Further, our pilot trial found that coupling Parent Handbook-like psychoeducational content
with such PNF in a social media-inspired app (ParentCandor or PC PNF+) prevented and decreased risky
drinking in students when parents were not incentivized. Qualitative data collected from parents also suggested
several ways to improve parents’ engagement with the PC PNF+ app which are likely to translate into even
stronger effects than observed in the initial trial. Building on this work, Phase 1 of this project seeks to optimize
the PC PNF+ app based on pilot parent feedback. Further, fnformed by their comments about time constraints,
we will also develop a less time-intensive, email-based social norms marketing campaign (SNMC+) PBI that
communicates similar normative information as in the PC PNF+ app with breif Handbook-like tips for
parenting around alcohol. Phase 1 will also include a national norms documentation survey (N=2000) of
parents of incoming college students to identify inclusive and generalizable norms to feature in PNF+ and
SNMC+ interventions. Additionally, parent focus groups and interviews with university stakeholders at two
sites will be conducted to identify how these PBI approaches can be packaged to maximize usefulness from the
perspectives of parents and universities. Then, in Phase 2, a large, multi-site implementation-effectiveness trial
with three cohorts of first-year students (N=2400) will compare the feasibility and effectiveness of PNF+ and
SNMC+ against the “gold standard” Handbook and a no-PBI control. Parents will be invited by their child’s
University to one of the PBIs just as they would be in the real-world. We will objectively examine which PBI is
most engaging to parents, as well as which is most effective at preventing and reducing student drinking and
consequences. In addition, parent engagement, alcohol approval, and communication will be examined as
mediators of PBI effects on student-level outcomes. Finally, the most engaging and effective PBI will be further
discussed with university stakeholders to identify ways to increase the likelihood of real-world adoption.
