Effectiveness of a Web-Based Intervention for Reducing Problematic Alcohol Use in Korean Female College Students

Background and Purpose: Heavy drinking of female college students is an emerging social issue in worldwide. Binge drinking can have a number of negative impacts not only for drinkers but also for societies as a whole. Furthermore, the consequences of heavy drinking differ by gender in biological and social reasons. Thus, prevention and intervention need to be considered for binge drinking of female college students. Especially, many studies suggest that the web-based intervention might be more effective than the more traditional approach. This study aims to apply and evaluate effectiveness of the “the online-based Brief Empowerment Program for Alcohol Use Monitor (on-BEAM)” (Jo et al, 2019) program among female university students in South Korea.

Methods: Participants were current drinkers scoring 3 or higher AUDIT-C among female university students in Korea. Participants were recruited through the online community sites at all 39 universities in Seoul. A total of 70 participants from the experimental group and 113 participants from the control group were analyzed. A pretest-posttest control group design was used and the intervention was an eight-week web-based intervention for high-risk drinkers. Repeated measures analysis of variance (RMANOVA) is used with AUDIT-C scores.

Results: During eight weeks, the AUDIT-C score of both experimental and control group decreased over time. However, the experimental group displayed a significant decrease of the score, indicating the effectiveness of the intervention (P=0.00, RMANOVA). The intervention resulted in reductions of 11.7% compared to the baseline in AUDIT-C mean scores for the experimental group.

Conclusions and Implications: The present study provides a basis to enhance an implementation of effective interventions needed to reduce heavy drinking among Korean female college students. The significant effects for the experimental group are related to the characteristics of the web-based intervention program. Web-based program is more appropriate than in-person intervention for female college students with problematic drinking when considering the context of Korean society due to concerns about stigma. In addition, the study provides implication that gender and age specific intervention would be important.