Melissa A Lewis*, University of Washington, Seattle, United States Dana Litt*, University of Washington, Seattle, United States Christine Lee*, University of Washington, United States Track: Research Presentation Topic: Web 2.0 approaches for behaviour change, public health and biosurveillance Presentation Type: Poster presentation Submission Type: Single Presentation Last modified: 2014-11-03

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Background
Web-based interventions have been shown to be efficacious in reducing college student drinking and related risky sexual behavior (Carey, Scott-Sheldon, Elliot, Garey, & Carey, 2012; Cronce & Larimer, 2011; Lewis et al., in press). Web-based interventions are less expensive and less difficult (i.e., no training of facilitators or scheduling sessions, etc.) to implement than in-person, group or multi-session interventions, thus they have greater reach, can better include low-incidence or “hidden” populations, and are consequently more generalizable. Web-based interventions reduce participant burden (i.e., not having to come to a clinic or lab) and thus make it more feasible for participants to complete the intervention. However, computer-delivered, including those delivered via the web, have been shown to be less efficacious than in-person interventions (Carey, Scott-Sheldon, Carey & DeMartini, 2007). Thus, there is a need for additional research to examine why this may be the case.
Objective
The present study is the first to examine what college students are doing, who they are with, and where they are at when receiving a web-based intervention. Furthermore, the present study examines participants’ subjective reports of attentiveness as a moderator of intervention efficacy.
Methods
Participants were randomly selected undergraduate students aged 18 to 25 from a large public northwestern university. Students who meet inclusion criteria (N = 480) were randomized into one of four conditions. For the purpose of the present study, we examined all intervention conditions in comparison to the attention control condition at the three-month follow-up.
Results
Most (62.3%) participants engaged in at least one activity when viewing their online feedback and 30.1% engaged in two or more activities. The majority (74.5%) of participants reported viewing the online feedback at home. Similarly, most (76.7%) participants viewed the online feedback alone. A main effect of attentiveness was also evident suggesting that paying more attention to information presented online was associated with more drinking at the three-month follow-up. This was qualified by the predicted interaction between feedback and attentiveness, which suggested that feedback effects on drinks per week at three-month follow-up were stronger among those who processed the information more carefully. When examining frequency of drinking prior to sex, there was no main effect of attentiveness. Nor did attentiveness moderate the effect of feedback on frequency of drinking prior to sex.
Conclusions
The present study extends the literature on web-based interventions as it offers a glimpse as to what college students are doing, who they are with, and where they are when viewing web-based personalized feedback. The results indicate that most students are engaged in other activities, are alone, and at home when viewing the feedback. The finding that most students are engaged in one other activity (32.2%) or two or more activities (30.1%) when viewing the feedback offers a potential explanation for why in-person interventions are somewhat more efficacious at reducing college student drinking than computer-delivered interventions (Carey et al., 2007).Additional research is needed to help determine ways to increase attention during computer- or web-delivered interventions.