College Bystanders: Coaching Students With Technology to Help Intoxicated peers

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Every year, half of all college students experience a negative consequence as a result of their or other students alcohol use. This prevalence of drinking and ensuing consequences, despite the existence of well developed alcohol education programs, indicates a possible need for a program that shifts focus from teaching personal alcohol abstinence to educating students on how to recognize the need to care for, and how to take care of, their friends and peers at social gatherings involving alcohol. The proposed project is a partnership between researchers and multimedia programmers at Klein Buendel, Inc., student health service professionals and researchers at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and researchers at the University of New Mexico to produce an Internet-accessible Computer Assisted Bystander Intervention (CABI) program for college students that will normalize student helping behavior and teach students skills to monitor their friends and intervene before negative alcohol-related events occur. This Phase I project will focus on developing the main segment of the CABI: a variable outcome video (VOV) based on social psychology of college student drinking and bystander behavior. The scientifically-based and innovative proposed VOV program uses a branching storyline to present students with college party scenarios for which intervention is appropriate, and through that storyline capitalizes on the documented effect of narrative communication in changing. The completed Phase II product will be the three-segment CABI program, completely accessible online, that will: a) educate students about the bystander effect and alcohol use, b) help students learn to recognize action cues for intervention opportunities, and c) provide students with the VOV in which they can practice choosing intervention actions in the safety of a virtual environment. The proposed SBIR Phase I project will develop the content and the look and feel design for the most extensive segment of this CABI program, the VOV. Specifically, we will: a) gather input from an Expert Advisory Board, Student Advisory Board, and student focus groups to develop the content and aesthetic styling needed to thoroughly program a prototype for one outcome of the VOV segment and storyboard remaining outcomes; b) with online survey input from student health service professionals, determine how to design the program to be user friendly for college student health communities, and develop a plan for colleges to use to help them integrate the program into their existing health education programs; c) test the aesthetics and usability of the VOV program prototype with student focus groups; d) develop a specifications document to outline the full Phase II development plan. The proposed program is one of the first bystander-based alcohol programs, and to our knowledge, the first to be available online which provides the opportunity to reach a large number of students. The project has potential to have great impact on college students lives by normalizing a helper identity, and providing them with the skills they will need to overcome intervention-related anxiety and take care of their peers at social gatherings involving alcohol consumption. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Despite the existence of well-developed alcohol education programs, every year half of all college students experience a negative consequence (e.g., blackouts, unprotected sexual intercourse or sexual assault, and physically injury) as a result of their or other students alcohol use, which indicates a need for a program that shifts focus from teaching personal alcohol abstinence to educating students on how to recognize the need to care for, and how to take care of, their friends and peers at social gatherings involving alcohol. The proposed project will test the feasibility of producing a scientifically-based, innovative Internet-accessible Computer Assisted Bystander Intervention (CABI) program for college students that will normalize helping behavior and teach students intervention skills, by immersing them in a college party themed variable outcome video in which they can practice choosing intervention actions and observing the outcomes of those actions in the safety of a virtual environment. Because so many students experience negative effects of alcohol use, the project has the potential to have great impact on public health by normalizing a helper identity among college students, and providing them with the skills they will need to overcome intervention-related anxiety and take care of their friends and peers at social gatherings involving alcohol consumption.