Reducing heavy episodic drinking and sexual risk taking among college freshmen: A brief motivational interview (MI) approach

Approximately 40% of college students are heavy episodic drinkers, defined as consuming five or more drinks on a single occasion for men (four or more drinks for women) at least once in the past 2 weeks. Heavy episodic drinking is associated with many academic, social, and health-related problems – specifically sexual risk taking.

Six hundred forty-one college freshmen at a large public university in North Carolina were randomly assigned to a motivational intervention (MI), a motivational intervention plus feedback (MIFB), feedback only (FB), or assessment only (AO) conditions. The goal of MI is to trigger self-regulation processes, such as encouraging individuals to evaluate their present condition, weighing the costs and benefits of changing or not changing, and committing to change. Ninety-one percent of eligible participants completed the 3-month follow-up survey and ninety-three percent were assessed at 6-months.

This presentation will explore changes in drinking behavior as well as differences in self-reported sexual risk taking behaviors or situations.

Currently, all three intervention groups (MI, MIFB, FB) show significant reductions in the average number of drinks per week and in the number of heavy drinking episodes at 3 months. Results also indicate that the MI and FB participants continued to demonstrate decreases in the average number of drinks per week and the number of past month heavy drinking episodes at the six months post-intervention assessment. Surprising, these early results do not indicate a significant effect from the most intensive intervention – MIFB. Data will be presented on sexual risk taking behaviors or situations.