Stand-Alone Personalized Normative Feedback For College Student Drinkers: A Meta-Analytic Review, 2004 To 2014

Abstract

Background: Norms clarification has been identified as an effective component of college student drinking interventions, prompting research on norms clarification as a single-component intervention known as Personalized Normative Feedback (PNF). Previous reviews have examined PNF in combination with other components but not as a stand-alone intervention. Objectives: To investigate the degree to which computer-delivered stand-alone personalized normative feedback interventions reduce alcohol consumption and alcohol-related harms among college students and to compare gender-neutral and gender-specific PNF. Data Sources: Electronic databases were searched systematically through November 2014. Reference lists were reviewed manually and forward and backward searches were conducted. Selection Criteria: Outcome studies that compared computer-delivered, stand-alone PNF intervention with an assessment only, attention-matched, or active treatment control and reported alcohol use and harms among college students. Methods: Between-group effect sizes were calculated as the standardized mean difference in change scores between treatment and control groups divided by pooled standard deviation. Withingroup effect sizes were calculated as the raw mean difference between baseline and followup divided by pooled within-groups standard deviation. Results: Eight studies (13 interventions) with a total of 2,050 participants were included. Compared to control participants, students who received gender-neutral (dbetween = 0.291, 95% CI [0.159, 0.423]) and gender-specific PNF (dbetween = 0.284, 95% CI [0.117, 0.451]) reported greater reductions in drinking from baseline to follow-up. Students who received genderneutral PNF reported 3.027 (95% CI [2.171, 3.882]) fewer drinks per week at first follow-up and gender-specific PNF reported 3.089 (95% CI [0.992, 5.186]) fewer drinks. Intervention effects were small for harms (dbetween = 0.157, 95% CI [0.037, 0.278]). Conclusions: Computer-delivered PNF is an effective stand-alone approach for reducing college student drinking and has a small impact on alcohol-related harms. Effects are small but clinically relevant when considered from a public health perspective. Additional research is needed to examine computer-delivered, stand-alone PNF as a population-level prevention program.

Publication Date

10-8-2015

Publication Title

PLoS ONE

Volume

10

Issue

10

Document Type

Article

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0139518

Socpus ID

84948662771 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/84948662771

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