Citation

Walukevich-Dienst K, Neighbors C, Buckner JD. Addict. Behav. 2019; 98: e106040.

Affiliation

Louisiana State University, Department of Psychology, 236 Audubon Hall, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, United States of America. Electronic address: jbuckner@lsu.edu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.addbeh.2019.106040

PMID

31302314

Abstract

There is growing evidence that college cannabis use is associated with use-related problems, yet efforts to reduce cannabis-related problems via online personalized feedback interventions (PFIs) have had limited success in significantly reducing risky cannabis use among college students. However, men and women may respond differently to such interventions and failure to examine effects of gender may obfuscate intervention effects. Thus, the current study tested intervention effects (moderated by gender) of an online, university-specific PFI for high-risk cannabis users (i.e., past-month cannabis users with at least one recent cannabis-related problem) who were randomly assigned to an online PFI (n = 102) or an online personalized normative feedback-only condition (PNF-only; n = 102). Gender moderated the relationship between condition and one-month follow-up problems, such that women in the PFI condition reported fewer cannabis-related problems at follow-up than women in the PNF-only condition. Men in the PFI condition did not significantly differ from men in the PNF-only condition on use-related problems at follow-up. Cannabis PFIs may be efficacious for reducing cannabis use-related problems among undergraduate women (but not men) and women may benefit from online interventions that include problem-focused components.

Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Language: en

Keywords

Cannabis use; College students; Gender effects; Personalized feedback intervention