# Real-time Predictors of Prescription Drug Misuse by College Students and Assessment of Misuse on Their Developmental Trajectories

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON · 2020 · $424,290

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
Personal and group characteristics that place some individuals at higher risk of engaging in prescription drug
misuse compared to their peers have been established; however, among those who misuse, researchers have
not systematically discovered in-the-moment antecedents of misuse behavior in real-world environments or
tracked misuse over time to understand the longer-term consequences of misuse. There is a critical need to
correct these knowledge gaps because, until we do so, society's ability to prevent young adults—who display
the highest misuse rates and experience increasingly costly health and well-being impacts—from misusing
prescription drugs will likely remain beyond reach. The long-term goal is to reduce the occurrence of
prescription drug misuse among young adults. The objective in this application is to identify factors that predict
college students' misuse in the moment and determine consequences of their prescription drug misuse on
health and well-being across two years. The central hypothesis is that contextual information from the moment
when misuse occurs and tracking of misuse over time are crucial for understanding the immediate predictors
and longer-term consequences of prescription drug misuse. The rationale for the proposed research is that
understanding misuse in the moment and assessing outcomes over time will provide a strong evidence-based
framework to guide targeted intervention efforts aimed at reducing this hazardous substance behavior during a
developmental period deemed foundational for successful adulthood. The overall objective for this project will
be attained by pursuing the following two specific aims: 1) Identify momentary factors (e.g., behaviors,
emotions, situations) that predict real-time prescription drug misuse; and 2) Determine the extent to which
prescription drug misuse over time alters trajectories of health and well-being outcomes. Building on the
investigative team's recent preliminary data that indicate strong feasibility and utility of collecting momentary
reports of prescription drug misuse in daily life, 355 individuals oversampled for elevated risk of prescription
misuse will complete ecological momentary assessment (EMA) procedures for 28 days. The design consists of
signal-based (scheduled across the day) and event-based (self-initiated at moments when misuse is about to
occur) prompts. EMA will collect ratings of theoretically-driven contextual triggers and real-time prescription
drug misuse in day-to-day environments. EMA and survey data will be collected during T1. Follow-up sessions
conducted every 6 months across the next 2 years (i.e., T2, T3, T4, T5) will track prescription drug misuse over
time and collect important health and well-being outcomes. Quantitative modeling will be employed to identify
real-time predictors of prescription drug misuse in college students' daily lives and document how prescription
drug misuse alters their developmental trajectories, ...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9879741
- **Project number:** 5R01DA042093-04
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
- **Principal Investigator:** Lauren M Papp
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $424,290
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2017-04-01 → 2022-02-28

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9879741

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9879741, Real-time Predictors of Prescription Drug Misuse by College Students and Assessment of Misuse on Their Developmental Trajectories (5R01DA042093-04). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9879741. Licensed CC0.

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