A brief online intervention for sleep problems and heavy drinking: Impacts on alcohol- and sleep-related problems.

Abstract

There is growing evidence that poor sleep contributes to increased alcohol use and related impairment among college students (DeMartini & Fucito, 2014), with heavy drinking exacerbating these effects. Efforts to reduce this impact via online personalized feedback interventions (PFIs) have had limited success, and there is a dearth of research on attempts to simultaneously address these concerns among college students using brief, web-based interventions. The present study assessed intervention efficacy in addition to the impact of sleep disturbance on alcohol outcomes using a novel, brief, online PFI for sleep problems among college students who drink heavily. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the three interventions: PFI-Alcohol (n = 66), PFI-Alcohol-Sleep (n = 64), or assessment-only control (n = 66). Alcohol use, related impairment, and sleep problems decreased from baseline to 1-month follow-up under all conditions. However, participants under the control condition endorsed greater alcohol use during follow-up compared with intervention conditions. Notably, baseline insomnia symptoms predicted follow-up alcohol problems (but not use) when accounting for variance attributable to baseline negative affect, condition, and sex. More work is needed to examine the impact of brief online PFIs that concurrently target alcohol use and sleep problems among college students to determine its impact on reducing related-problems in this population. Results highlight the need for further investigation of the incorporation of sleep components within online alcohol PFIs to reduce heavy drinking and sleep problems among college students. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).