In a previous study, the authors showed that the efficacy of personalized normative feedback-based (PNF) college alcohol interventions may be improved by adding gamified elements (i.e., game design elements such as points, chance, competition, and personal avatars). In a new study, the authors examined the degree to which two types of drinking feedback delivered within an upgraded, smart-phone based version of the game are effective in reducing normative beliefs and alcohol use. Participants (N = 222) were first-year college students attending a private, mid-sized university in the west coast of the U.S. They were randomized to one of three conditions: Control, PNF, and PNF + Reflective feedback. The game tested their perceptions of various college life topics and was named CampusGANDR v2 (Gamified Alcohol Norm Discovery & Readjustment). It was designed to be self-sustaining, such that it was engaging enough that participants would play voluntarily without the need for external motivators or incentives. CampusGANDR v2 presented feedback to participants in six separate modules delivered once per week, over six weeks and there was a four-day gap between participants’ answering of questions and the delivery of feedback. For three of the six weeks, the feedback revolved around alcohol-related topics, however, participants in the control condition saw no alcohol-related feedback at all, PNF participants saw alcohol-related feedback during the first module but not during the second module, and PNF + Reflective participants saw alcohol-related feedback during both modules. Participants were also able to submit and vote on their own questions each week and would receive a novel type of feedback in addition to the standard descriptive PNF, which included opposite peers’ judgments of participants’ self-reported drinking behavior, or reflective norms. Two months after the game was over, participants were asked to answer a set of questions related to their perceptions of drinking norms and alcohol consumption. The authors used ANCOVA models for data analysis. Results showed that roughly 22% of the questions submitted by participants pertained to drinking and those types of questions received the largest numbers of votes among peers. In addition, conditional effects on drinking behavior at the two-month follow-up were moderated by participants’ drinking at the initial assessment. That is, among the light drinkers neither intervention condition significantly reduced behavior relative to control. Among moderate drinkers, the PNF + Reflective condition was significantly more effective in reducing drinking behavior than was control (p = 0.005) while the PNF only condition did not significantly differ from control (p = 0.12). Noticeably, among the heavier drinkers, both the PNF only (p = 0.004) and PNF + Reflective (p < 0.001) conditions significantly reduced drinking behavior relative to control.
Take away: Participants who received both descriptive and reflective feedback on peer alcohol use had significantly reduced normative perceptions and reduced alcohol use two months post intervention.