INTERVENING WITH FRATERNITIES TO DECREASE ALCOHOL ABUSE

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DESCRIPTION: This two-year application combines the practical technology of applied behavior analysis with theories from learning, social influence, and personality research to develop cost-effective interventions for decreasing at-risk alcohol consumption and its associated negative effects. The subjects are university students attending fraternity-sponsored parties where excessive alcohol is consumed. The methodology extends the investigators' prior NIAAA-supported research by assessing on-going party behaviors and conditions that potentially increase or decrease alcohol consumption, as well as measuring beliefs, intentions, and blood alcohol concentration (BAC) immediately before and after students attend 24 different fraternity/sorority parties. The systematic observation of party behaviors and conditions will be used to develop a Host Intervention program for field-testing during the second year of the grant period. Two contrasting education/training approaches to reduce at-risk alcohol consumption and associated negative consequences (especially DUI) would be evaluated during the first year. Each intervention approach (i.e. Resistance Skills vs. Normative Feedback) has a solid theoretical foundation and is used frequently in education/training approaches to reduce alcohol abuse. Objective behavioral evidence regarding the relative impact of these intervention approaches is nonexistent. The proposed research develops interventions from these differing approaches for a college population and compares their impact on norms, attitudes, and intentions regarding alcohol consumption, as well as on actual BAC and party behaviors. The results of this evaluation will lead to the development of a combined Resistance Skills plus Feedback intervention that will be tested during the second year and compared with a Host Intervention program. The investigators' prior NIAAA-funded research has shown that party-goers' intentions regarding levels of alcohol impairment match closely to their actual BAC at the end of the party. This finding supports Azjen and Fishbein's Theory of Reasoned Action and suggests that interventions successful at reducing intentions to drink excessive alcoholic beverages will also reduce at-risk drinking. The interventions in the present application were designed with this in mind and should be more influential than the interventions tested in our prior research. Unlike the investigators' prior approaches, these interventions will involve fraternity and sorority members before the parties and empower them to make a difference.