A new study explored individual engagement and comfort during a web-based personalized feedback intervention for alcohol and sexual assault risk reduction (SARR). Participants (N = 264) were college women between the ages of 18 to 20 years and reported engaging in heavy episodic drinking in the past month. Participants completed a survey and were randomly assigned to either a control condition (minimal assessment or full assessment control), or an intervention condition (alcohol, SARR or alcohol + SARR intervention). The survey and interventions measured the following. Engagement was measured in terms of intervention completion, time and distraction using a post-intervention survey. Comfort was measured by asking participants how comfortable they were post-intervention. Context was assessed by asking participants to describe the setting in which they participated and whether they were currently under the influence of alcohol, marijuana or other substances. Sexual assault since age 14 was assessed using the Sexual Experiences Survey. Lastly, frequency of heavy episodic drinking (HED) was measured by asking participants about frequency of HED in the past month. The alcohol intervention included personalized normative feedback and alcohol education, the SARR intervention included psycho-education and personalized feedback related to sexual assault and the alcohol + SARR intervention included elements of both. The authors used chi-square tests and between-group analyses of variance (ANOVAs) to evaluate group differences. Results showed no significant correlations among time spent on the intervention, distraction and comfort and no differences in intervention completion by condition (p = .266). In comparison to the minimal assessment, SARR, and combined condition, participants in the alcohol intervention reported less comfort (p = 0.10). Participants with a sexual assault history reported more comfort in the SARR intervention than the alcohol or full assessment conditions as well as more comfort in the minimal assessment than the alcohol intervention (p = .020). In contrast, participants who reported drinking at least once a week were least comfortable in the alcohol condition. While setting was not associated with differences in comfort (p = .383), it was associated with changes in distraction. Finally, substance use was not associated with distraction (p = .108) or comfort (p = .144).
Take away: The majority of participants completed the intervention in a reasonable amount of time, in private and without consuming substances. While participants with sexual assault history were most comfortable in the SARR intervention, participants who engaged in HED were least comfortable in the alcohol intervention condition.