Maximizing geospatial methods to understand emotional processes in Stress-Related Drinking Risk

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ABSTRACT Negative affect (NA) and difficulty regulating this affect (ER) are key determinants of drinking risk. Experimental data have shown that alcohol cues augment NA effects and compromise ER capabilities, further contributing to drinking vulnerability. Yet, these studies have been limited to the lab, and lack ecological validity. No studies have examined affect and ER as they occur in daily life, in real time and in real settings. This is an important gap in the knowledge base, as an understanding of how environmental circumstances may influence the affective processes implicated in drinking could inform intervention. Geospatial information (GI) technology can enhance understanding of the daily life alcohol cue environment. This includes two key dimensions of the environment: momentary environmental cue influences (i.e. alcohol environments that a person is exposed to while experiencing NA), and aggregate environmental influences (i.e., typical patterns of movement within alcohol cue environments over time). In this application, we propose a fine-grained examination of how alcohol cue environments contextualize affect, ER, and drinking risk in daily life. Our community sample (N=220) will complete a baseline assessment, and a 14-day EMA protocol to examine how alcohol cues in the environment may contextualize NA and efforts to regulate NA. Using time- stamped geolocation data and daily EMA reports, environmental influences will be examined at both the momentary (i.e., the context at the time that NA is occurring), and aggregate (i.e., typical patterns of interaction with the environment) level across the 14-day assessment period. GPS, EMA self-report, and interview data will be used together to depict environmental influences, and GPS/EMA self-report will be used to temporally link NA (Aim 1a,1b) and ER (Aim 2a,2b) to alcohol cue environmental, and to examine how these factors lead to cognitive (urge to drink) and behavioral (alcohol seeking, drinking) drinking risk in real-time. In exploratory analyses, we will examine the interactive effects of NA X ER X Environment (Aim 2c). Because a long-term goal is to use these data to inform intervention development, in Aim 3, a randomly selected subset (n=30) of the sample will received personalized feedback about affect-related drinking in the context of idiographic environmental risk. Another (n=30) will be assessed but receive no feedback. Both groups with be followed over 1-month. This study will be the first to our knowledge to examine the contributions of NA and ER to drinking risk in the context of daily life environments. Findings can inform next steps for larger-scale studies, and can be applied to the development of interventions that consider the individual in the context of daily life.