The efficacy of personalized feedback interventions delivered via smartphone among at-risk college student gamblers

Abstract

At-risk gambling is a public health problem that college students engage in at a disproportionate level compared to the general adult population. Brief interventions that incorporate personalized feedback have been efficacious at reducing gambling and related problems. The purpose of the present study was to examine the efficacy of personalized feedback-based interventions delivered via smartphone and text message. Participants were 255 students who met our screening criteria for ‘‘problem’’ or ‘‘pathological’’ gambling, and were randomized to one of three conditions: personalized feedback and follow-up targeted text messages (PFB-TXT); personalized feedback and follow-up educational information about gambling (PFB-EDU); and a control condition that received no personalized feedback or follow-up text messages. Dependent variables included percent days abstinent (PDA) from gambling, average amount wagered on a gambling day, and gambling-related problems. Results indicated that the PFB conditions did not have a direct effect relative to the control condition on the dependent variables at the six-month follow-up, but a statistically significant mediated effect on gambling-related problems via gambling norms did emerge at one-month. No differences between the two PFB conditions in terms of direct or indirect effects on the six-month outcome variables were determined. Findings from this study suggest that the personalized text condition did not provide greater efficacy in changing gambling-related outcomes over general educational messages with personalized feedback. To help explain the lack of direct intervention effects, we explored two hypotheses related to our study design and sample of gamblers.