A Gamified, Social Media Inspired Personalized Normative Feedback Alcohol Intervention for Sexual Minority Women

Summary

Sexual minority women in the United States are more likely to drink alcohol, engage in heavy drinking, and experience alcohol-related problems than are heterosexual women. Yet, to date, no evidence-based intervention or prevention efforts have been developed to reduce alcohol consumption among female sexual minority community members. The proposed research seeks to narrow the disparity in alcohol intervention research by examining an innovative gamified personalized normative feedback (PNF) intervention to reduce drinking among sexual minority women found to frequent social media sites and overestimate norms related to peers' general alcohol use and drinking to cope with sexual minority stigma. The newly developed GANDR (Gamified Alcohol Norm Discovery and Readjustment) PNF format takes the well-established core components of a PNF alcohol intervention and delivers these components within an inviting, social media inspired, culturally-tailored online competition. This incognito intervention format is designed to be more appealing, engaging, believable, positively received, and thus effective than standard web-based PNF. The version developed for sexual minority women delivers PNF on alcohol use and stigma-coping behaviors within the context of an online game about sexual minority female stereotypes. Following two introductory rounds of play by a large cohort of sexual minority women, a sub-sample of 500 sexual minority female drinkers will be invited to participate in an evaluation study. Study participants will be randomized to receive 1 of 3 unique sequences of feedback (i.e., Alcohol \& Stigma-Coping, Alcohol \& Control, or Control topics only) during 2 intervention rounds taking place over a 6-month period. The randomized feedback sequences and multiple rounds of play will allow the research team to evaluate whether PNF on alcohol use reduces sexual minority women's alcohol consumption and negative consequences relative to PNF on control topics (AIM 2: H1), examine whether providing PNF on stigma-coping behaviors in addition to alcohol use further reduces alcohol use and consequences beyond alcohol PNF alone (AIM 2: H2), and identify mediators and moderators of intervention effectiveness (AIM 3).

Conditions

• Alcohol Drinking
• Alcohol Abuse
• Alcohol; Harmful Use

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Personalized Normative Feedback

Personalized Normative Feedback (PNF) is a popular social norms-based intervention strategy which presents individuals with a personalized, individual report designed to correct misperceived peer norms using a graphical display. Bar charts compare actual alcohol use statistics for the peer group to A) participants' estimates of peer drinking and, B) their own self-reported drinking.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)

  collaborator NIH

• Loyola Marymount University

  lead OTHER

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

DOUBLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

21 Years

Max Age

55 Years

Sex

FEMALE

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2019-02-06

Primary Completion

2019-10-10

Completion

2019-10-10

Countries

• United States

Study Locations