Project ACT was designed to develop and evaluate an intervention strategy to reduce the onset and extent of binge drinking in students during their first year of college. The approach taken was relatively novel in that the focus of the intervention was on influencing binge drinking behavior of the students before they came to college, through their parents, during the critical time between high school graduation and the beginning of college. Almost all current approaches in the binge drinking domain are based on implementing an intervention while the students are at college. By contrast, the present approach attempted to reach students just before they came to college, so as to make them more resistant to influences that encouraged the adoption or continuation of binge drinking behaviors.
Funded by the NIH/NIAAA.
Principal Investigator: Rob Turrisi, Ph.D.
Selected Publications:
Abar, C. C., Mallett, K. A., Turrisi, R., & Abar, B. (2016). First- and second-hand consequences of alcohol use in college: Differential associations with later alcohol use. Journal of Substance Use, 21(1), 107-111. PMCID: PMC4863495 [PubMed]
Abar, C. C., Turrisi, R., & Mallett, K. A. (2014). Differential trajectories of alcohol-related behaviors across the first year of college by parenting profiles. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 28(1), 53-61. PMCID: PMC4296882 [PubMed]
Hultgren, B. A., Cleveland, M. J., Turrisi, R., & Mallett, K. A. (2014). How estimation of drinking influences alcohol-related consequences across the first year of college. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 38(4), 1160-1166. PMCID: PMC3984364 [PubMed]
Mallett, K. A., Marzell, M., Scaglione, N. M., Hultgren, B., & Turrisi, R. (2014). Are all alcohol and energy drink users the same? Examining individual variation in relation to alcohol mixed with energy drink use, risky drinking, and consequences. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 28(1), 97-104. PMCID: PMC4176826 [PubMed]
Marzell, M. Turrisi, R., Mallett, K. A., Ray, A. E., & Scaglione, N. M. (2014). Combining alcohol and energy drinks: An examination of psychosocial constructs and alcohol outcomes among college students using a longitudinal design. Addiction Research and Theory, 22(2), 91-97. PMCID: PMC4207644 [PubMed]
Stapleton, J. L., Turrisi, R., Cleveland, M. J., Ray, A. E., & Lu, S. E. (2014). Pre-college matriculation risk profiles and alcohol consumption patterns during the first semesters of college. Prevention Science, 15(5), 705-715. PMCID: PMC3918484 [PubMed]
Varvil-Weld, L., Crowley, D. M., Turrisi, R., Greenberg, M. T., & Mallett, K. A. (2014). Hurting, helping, or neutral? The effects of parental permissiveness toward adolescent drinking on college student alcohol use and problems. Prevention Science, 15(5), 716-724. PMCID: PMC4263026 [PubMed]
Varvil-Weld, L., Scaglione, N., Cleveland, M., Mallett, K., Turrisi, R., & Abar, C. (2014). Optimizing timing and dosage: Does parent type moderate the effects of variations of a parent-based intervention to reduce college student drinking? Prevention Science, 15(1), 94-102. PMCID: PMC3688671 [PubMed]
Cleveland, M., Hultgren, B., Varvil-Weld, L., Mallett, K. A., Turrisi, R., & Abar, C. (2013). Moderation of a parent-based intervention on transitions in drinking: Examining the role of normative perceptions and attitudes among high- and low-risk first-year college students. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 37(9), 1587-1594. PMCID: PMC3706579 [PubMed]
Turrisi, R., Mallett, K. A., Cleveland, M., Varvil-Weld, L., Abar, C., Scaglione, N. & Hultgren, B. (2013). An evaluation of timing and dosage of a parent based intervention to minimize college students’ alcohol consumption. Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, 74(1), 30-40. PMCID: PMC3517262 [PubMed]
Varvil-Weld, L., Marzell, M., Turrisi, R., Mallett, K., & Cleveland, M. (2013). Examining the relationship between alcohol-energy drink risk profiles and high-risk drinking behaviors. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 37(8), 1410-1416. PMCID: PMC3694984 [PubMed]