# Revolutionizing Normative Re-education: Delivering Enhanced PNF within a Social Media Inspired Game About College Life

> **NIH NIH R01** · LOYOLA MARYMOUNT UNIVERSITY · 2021 · $421,825

## Abstract

Project Summary
NIAAA identifies first-year college students as a high-risk group for heavy drinking and harmful consequences.
Further, these students' perceptions of their peers' drinking (descriptive norms) are strong predictors of their
own alcohol use and those norms are consistently misperceived; students overestimate peer drinking behavior,
leading them to drink more themselves. Most universities require incoming students to complete remotely-
delivered interventions to correct these misperceptions, known as Normative Re-education programs.
However, the main risk-reduction approach in these programs, personalized normative feedback (PNF), suffers
from limitations that have impeded large reductions in student alcohol use and consequences. Our pilot work
has introduced a new smartphone-based app called CampusGANDR that delivers PNF within a weekly game
about college life. During the game students submit questions, vote on their favorite questions, answer these
questions, and win or lose points based on the accuracy of their responses. A major innovation of
CampusGANDR is that it draws on recent literature in the field of gamification, adding features like points,
leader boards, and chance-based uncertainty to make PNF more interesting, believable, and palatable to
students. Further, we have successfully invited students to play the game voluntarily, rather than offering
monetary compensation for taking part or making participation mandatory like most current programs and
research initiatives. In the context of CampusGANDR students view feedback because they are intrinsically
motivated, rather than extrinsically motivated, to do so. Based on extensive pilot work, the current proposal
seeks to: 1) evaluate the efficacy of CampusGANDR in a large-scale multi-site trial; 2) identify the optimal
dosage of alcohol feedback to deliver within CampusGANDR for correcting norms and reducing alcohol use
among students who differ in alcohol use (non-drinkers, light to moderate drinkers, and heavy drinkers); 3)
examine person-level moderators of intervention efficacy; and 4) evaluate the sustainability of CampusGANDR
among students who use the app but aren't recruited into the study. During the first year of the project we will
work with an award-winning app development company to design and program a fully-functional versions of
the CampusGANDR app. Next, 2,400 first-year students will be recruited across three cohorts at two distinctly
different campuses (Loyola Marymount University and the University of Houston) to play CampusGANDR for
12 weeks and to complete 4 surveys about their alcohol use and personality variables. Students who are not
sampled into the survey study will still be able to take part in CampusGANDR, and their app usage data will be
employed to measure the organic churn rate and viral growth coefficient of the app. The project will result in
cutting-edge native smartphone (IOS, Android) and web-versions of the app able to dynamically tai...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10172805
- **Project number:** 5R01AA027168-03
- **Recipient organization:** LOYOLA MARYMOUNT UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Joseph W. Labrie
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $421,825
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-06-20 → 2024-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10172805

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10172805, Revolutionizing Normative Re-education: Delivering Enhanced PNF within a Social Media Inspired Game About College Life (5R01AA027168-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10172805. Licensed CC0.

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