Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Human Factors
Date Submitted: Dec 12, 2017
Open Peer Review Period: Dec 12, 2017 - May 10, 2018
Date Accepted: May 10, 2018
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
A Text Message–Based Intervention Targeting Alcohol Consumption Among University Students: User Satisfaction and Acceptability Study
Background:
Heavy consumption of alcohol among university students is a global problem, with excessive drinking being the social norm. Students can be a difficult target group to reach, and only a minority seek alcohol-related support. It is important to develop interventions that can reach university students in a way that does not further stretch the resources of the health services. Text messaging (short message service, SMS)–based interventions can enable continuous, real-time, cost-effective, brief support in a real-world setting, but there is a limited amount of evidence for effective interventions on alcohol consumption among young people based on text messaging. To address this, a text messaging–based alcohol consumption intervention, the Amadeus 3 intervention, was developed.
Objective:
This study explored self-reported changes in drinking habits in an intervention group and a control group. Additionally, user satisfaction among the intervention group and the experience of being allocated to a control group were explored.
Methods:
Students allocated to the intervention group (n=460) were asked about their drinking habits and offered the opportunity to give their opinion on the structure and content of the intervention. Students in the control group (n=436) were asked about their drinking habits and their experience in being allocated to the control group. Participants received an email containing an electronic link to a short questionnaire. Descriptive analyses of the distribution of the responses to the 12 questions for the intervention group and 5 questions for the control group were performed.
Results:
The response rate for the user feedback questionnaire of the intervention group was 38% (176/460) and of the control group was 30% (129/436). The variation in the content of the text messages from facts to motivational and practical advice was appreciated by 77% (135/176) participants, and 55% (97/176) found the number of messages per week to be adequate. Overall, 81% (142/176) participants stated that they had read all or nearly all the messages, and 52% (91/176) participants stated that they were drinking less, and increased awareness regarding negative consequences was expressed as the main reason for reduced alcohol consumption. Among the participants in the control group, 40% (52/129) stated that it did not matter that they had to wait for access to the intervention. Regarding actions taken while waiting for access, 48% (62/129) participants claimed that they continued to drink as before, whereas 35% (45/129) tried to reduce their consumption without any support.
Conclusions:
Although the main randomized controlled trial was not able to detect a statistically significant effect of the intervention, most participants in this qualitative follow-up study stated that participation in the study helped them reflect upon their consumption, leading to altered drinking habits and reduced alcohol consumption.
ClinicalTrial:
International Standard Randomized Controlled Trial Number ISRCTN95054707; http://www.isrctn.com/ISRCTN95054707 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/705putNZT)
Citation
Per the author's request the PDF is not available.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.