This randomized clinical trial evaluated a combined parent-based and peer-based alcohol-abuse intervention that targeted high-school athletes as they transitioned to college.
BASICS is an individually delivered, brief feedback-and-skills intervention that targets peer influences through the provision of personalized feedback and discussion of alcohol norms, alcohol expectancies, negative consequences, and protective behavioral strategies and skills. The program is delivered in a motivational-enhancement style. BASICS has been identified as a Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services model program. Both preventive peer-delivered motivational feedback intervention and parent interventions of BASICS are supported by the literature; however, no intervention has been developed to address these two divergent types of critical influence concurrently. The parent intervention contains content on setting limits, reasons for drinking, risks of drinking to get drunk, warning sighs of a drinking problems, and riding with a drunk driver. The current study was designed to integrate these two interventions within a high-risk population of high-school athletes transitioning to college. The 23-item Rutgers Alcohol Problem Index (RAPI) was used to assess alcohol-related consequences within the past 3 months. The overall results indicate that the combined-intervention group had significantly lower alcohol consumption, high-risk drinking, and consequences at 10-month follow-up compared with the control group. Changes in descriptive and injunctive peer norms mediated intervention effects. These findings indicate that the parent intervention delivered to students before they begin college improves the effectiveness of the BASICS intervention. 2 tables, 1 figure, and 84 references