A Randomized Controlled Pilot Trial of Different Mobile Messaging Interventions for Problem Drinking Compared to...

Area of Science:

• Digital Health Interventions
• Behavioral Science
• Addiction Medicine

Background:

• Text messaging shows promise for reducing problem drinking alongside in-person services.
• Effectiveness of remote, stand-alone text messaging interventions for alcohol moderation is under-researched.
• Understanding message type impact on drinking outcomes is crucial for intervention development.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the effectiveness of different remote, automated text message interventions for reducing alcohol consumption.
• To compare daily messaging strategies against weekly self-tracking for problem drinkers.
• To explore the impact of message framing and tailoring on drinking outcomes.

Main Methods:

• An exploratory, single-blind randomized controlled pilot study with 152 participants seeking to reduce drinking.
• Comparison of four daily text message types (loss-framed, gain-framed, static tailored, adaptive tailored) against weekly mobile assessment (MA) self-tracking.
• 12-week intervention period with Poisson and least squares regressions for outcome analysis.

Main Results:

• All active messaging groups, except gain-framed, significantly reduced weekly drinks and heavy drinking days versus MA.
• Adaptive tailored and gain-framed groups showed significant reductions in drinking days compared to MA.
• Adaptive tailored texts demonstrated the largest effect sizes across all outcome measures.

Conclusions:

• Daily remote automated text messages can significantly reduce alcohol frequency and quantity compared to weekly self-tracking.
• Tailored adaptive text messages show the greatest potential for improving drinking outcomes.
• Larger studies are needed to differentiate between messaging interventions and elucidate mechanisms.