EMA for the Exposure to Alcohol Advertisements

The present proposed study has 3 primary objectives to address the knowledge gap regarding the exposure to alcohol advertisements in university students: (1) To estimate the frequency of exposure to alcohol advertisements and promotion of alcohol drinking culture (PADC) via television, print, radio, posters, banners, billboards, point-of-sale websites and social media in university students, (2) To examine the effect of exposure to alcohol advertising and PADC on alcohol use, binge drinking, pro-drinking attitudes and acceptance of alcohol advertisements, and (3) To examine the discrepancy in measuring the exposure to alcohol advertisements and PADC between the ecological momentary assessment and a traditional retrospective survey.The proposed study is a combination of (1) a time-based system-triggered EMA, which will collect real-time exposure to alcohol advertisements and (2) longitudinal surveys involving university students who are current alcohol users. Consented participants will be individually randomized to the EMA and non-EMA group. The EMA group will complete a baseline questionnaire, and complete 4 EMAs prompted randomly and 1 end-of-day survey with a smartphone app per day over a week. After 2 weeks of completing the EMA, they will be contacted to complete a telephone follow-up survey. The non-EMA group will only complete the baseline and the follow-up surveys.