Alcohol Alert for 16 to 18 year old adolescents

Approximately one half to two thirds of adolescents who drink at least monthly engages in high-risk drinking practices, consuming large quantities and drinking to intoxication. Excessive alcohol use by adolescents is associated with a wide range of short- and long term detrimental effects like blackouts, fights, alcohol poisoning, traffic accidents, unsafe sex, school dropout, unemployment, depression, and brain damage. There are a lot of intervention programs that target young adolescents around the age of 12 and there have been several interventions at colleges and universities to reduce excessive alcohol use in students. Until now, the age group 16-18 years was not a target of alcohol prevention interventions.
Parents play an important role in adolescent alcohol behaviour. Parenting style, parenting practices, communication about alcohol at home and the parent child relationship are important determinants of adolescents alcohol use. Concerning this big influence it is important to also target parents in an intervention to reduce excessive alcohol use in youth.
The study is aimed to develop and test a computer tailored alcohol intervention to reduce binge drinking in adolescents aged 16-18 years. A specific goal of the intervention is to accomplish a reduction of 10% of binge drinking in comparison with the control group. Parents will also be invited to visit a website where they receive computer tailored feedback on communication about alcohol and setting rules.

With the program Alcohol Alert we will reduce binge drinking of 16 to 18 year old dutch adolescents, through focusing on motivational factors (eg. attitude, self-efficacy), peer factors (eg. peer pressure, modeling, social norm) and parental factors (parenting practices).

Baseline data will be measured in januari 2014. The intervention will start immedialty after baseline data are gathered and continue until end of february. In May 2014 the first follow-up measurement will take place. In September 2014 the second follow-up measurement will be done.

The Alcohol Alert group (experimental condition) will receive a computer tailored (CT) internet intervention with the goal to reduce binge drinking. The control group will receive no intervention. Adolescent participants will have to fill in several questionnaires about their alcohol consumption behaviour, alcohol related problems, motivation to binge drink (attitude, social influence beliefs, self-efficacy, action plans and intention), parental alcohol socialization and some demographic variables. The responses of this online baseline questionnaire will then be used to generate highly personalized feedback messages. Over a period of several weeks, adolescents will be invited to a maximum of 5 sessions of the programm alcohol alert. The program and the personalized feedback messages will help participants to regulate their drinking behaviour in a healthy manner. Parents also have to fill in questionnaires addressing their alcohol consumption behaviour, alcohol related problems, motivation to drink alcohol, attitude, norms, permissiveness, monitoring, and rules regarding alcohol consumption, and will then be given access to a webpage addressing topics like the importance of parents as a role model and communication about alcohol in the family.