Can coping information enhance the effectivenes of a personalized normative feedback intervention?

In reaction to the national health objective of reducing the proportion of college students engaging in heavy at-risk drinking, the addition of a stress and coping component to a Personalized Normative Feedback (PNF) intervention was examined. Approximately 501 college students at the University of Texas at El Paso were recruited to participate during the spring, summer, and fall 2011 semesters. The purpose of the study was to investigate if the addition of a stress and coping component to a standard PNF intervention would have a stronger impact on reducing alcohol-related problems and consumption than using standard PNF intervention. A secondary purpose of the study was to explore if coping mediated program outcomes when information on it was included in a brief PNF intervention. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions, a standard PNF condition, a standard PNF plus a coping component condition, or an education only control condition. Two way 3x2 mixed factorial ANOVA examined between group differences primarily on alcohol-related problem outcomes and alcohol consumption problems. Results of this study did not support the hypotheses of differential effectiveness across the experimental conditions and enhancement of PNF interventions through inclusion of information and feedback on stress and coping. Specifically, tests of the key two- and three-way interactions were not significant for any of the drinking outcomes. Overall, the results appeared to show modest declines over time among all the alcohol consumption measures, which was positive from a public health standpoint, however, similar rates of decline were seen among all three conditions. In general, these effects were medium to large in size, using standard conventions for η2 effect sizes, as Cohen (1992)