Boston University School of Public Health and online website
Boston, Massachusetts, 02118, United States
NCT Number: NCT07836907
Emerging adulthood is a key developmental period with unique challenges, including elevated risk of substance use (including risky drinking, cigarette use, and illicit drug use), eating disorder symptoms, and severe psychological distress and suicidal ideation. This critical developmental period also offers an important opportunity for interventions to prevent adverse mental health outcomes in adulthood, particularly those related to substance use and disordered eating behaviors.
Research suggests several relevant potential targets for preventive interventions in this age group. Online media, especially social media (e.g., Instagram), are used by 90% of U.S. young adults, offering unprecedented access to informational and social support for young adults. Yet online media also provide new channels for harmful exposure to stigma (e.g., online harassment) and sociocultural appearance ideals for young adults. Such exposures may cause or exacerbate substance use and adverse mental health outcomes.
Existing brief interventions that improve media literacy (i.e., the ability to critically analyze and interpret media) and increase resistance to harmful sociocultural appearance ideals offer promise in supporting young adults to reduce body dissatisfaction and stress and coping behaviors (like substance use and disordered eating behaviors). However, these interventions have not previously accounted for the core role of body dissatisfaction or unique dimensions of social media literacy in young adults' health. Further, existing preventive interventions in this area have primarily been developed and tested with a focus on cisgender young people. To date, there are no gender-inclusive evidence-based interventions to address both social media-based stressors (e.g., harassment, appearance ideals) and resilience factors (e.g., social support) for young adults.
Trial opening soon.
Get Notified18 year–25 year
All sexes
Interventional
Not applicable
Boston, Massachusetts, 02118, United States
To address this gap, the investigators have been developing an interactive psychoeducational website as a brief preventive intervention (called the IMAGES Project Digital toolkit). The toolkit can be found at www.imagesproject.com. In the final phase of this study, an exploratory, single-arm feasibility study of the digital toolkit with a sample of young adults (n=120) ages 18-25 years will be conducted. The study design will entail baseline, immediate-post-intervention, and 3-month follow-up assessments. Primary outcomes are: intervention feasibility, acceptability, and participant satisfaction. In addition we will collect preliminary data on selected exploratory outcomes: social media-related risk factors for disordered eating and substance use (e.g., social media literacy skills, appearance ideal internalization) and selected behaviors (disordered eating and substance use).
This study will determine the extent to which the digital toolkit (brief intervention) is feasible, acceptable, and suitable for future testing among US young adults.
Healthy volunteers accepted: Yes
Only the study team can determine whether someone qualifies for participation.
Inclusion criteria
Exclusion criteria
A brief, web-based psychoeducational intervention with 5 self-guided activities that build social media literacy skills which takes 25-45 minutes to complete.
Time frame: 24-48 hours after web-based intervention
A validated scale by Weiner et al., 2017 will be used to assess feasibility. It has 4 items assessing dimensions of feasibility (e.g., "The digital toolkit seems like a good match"), with response options ranging from Completely agree (1) to Completely disagree (5). Scores can range from 4 to 20 and lower scores suggest greater feasibility.
Time frame: 24-48 hours after web-based intervention
A validated scale by Weiner et al., 2017 will be used to assess acceptability. It has 4 items assessing perceived acceptability of the digital toolkit (e.g., "The digital toolkit was appealing to me"), with response options ranging from Completely agree (1) to Completely disagree (5). Scores can range from 4 to 20 and lower scores suggest greater acceptability.
Time frame: 24-48 hours after web-based intervention
2 relevant items from a Intervention Appropriateness Measure (Weiner et al., 2017) e.g., ("The digital toolkit seems easy to use"). Response options range from Completely agree (1) to Completely disagree (5). Scores can range from 2 to 10 and lower scores suggest greater appropriateness.
Time frame: 24-48 hours after web-based intervention, 3-months after web-based intervention
The Client Satisfaction Questionnaire (Larson, 1979) which is a validated 8-item scale will be used to assess . Response options are tailored to specific items, with higher scores always indicating greater satisfaction, for example:
i. How would you rate the quality of the digital toolkit? Response options: Poor (1) to Excellent (5) ii. If you were to seek help again, would you come back to the toolkit? Response options: No, definitely not (1) to Yes, definitely (4) iii. To what extent has the toolkit met your needs? Response options: Almost all of my needs have been met (4) to None of my needs have been met (1) iv. How satisfied are you with the amount of information you received in the toolkit? Response options: Quite dissatisfied (1) to Very satisfied (4) v. Has the toolkit helped you to deal more effectively with your problems? Response options: Yes, it helped a great deal (4) to No, it seemed to make things worse (1)
Time frame: baseline, 24-48 hours after web-based intervention, 3-months after web-based intervention
The Perceived Social Media Literacy Scale (Tandoc et al., 2021), a validated 8-item scale will be used to assess social media literacy which incudes technical competence, informational awareness, and privacy and algorithmic awareness. there are 5 response options- from Strongly disagree (1) to Strongly agree (5). Scores can range from 8 yo 40 and higher scores are correlated with greater social media literacy skills.
Time frame: baseline, 3-months after web-based intervention
3-item measure adapted from Boer (2022). Response options will range from Never or less than once a week (0) to More than 40 times per week (7). Higher scores are correlated with greater intensity of social media use.
Time frame: baseline, 24-48 hours after web-based intervention, 3-months after web-based intervention
Internalization-General 5-items subscale of the Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Scale-3 (SATAQ-3; Thompson et al., 2004); 5-item subscale adapted for social media per Gordon et al. (2020). Response options ranging from Definitely disagree (1) to Definitely agree (5).
Time frame: baseline, 3-months after web-based intervention
Alcohol use will be assessed with the US Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT), which is a validated 3-item measure with questions about past year frequency of drinks consumed, number of drinks consumed on an average day of drinking, and how often the respondent had more than five drinks on one occasion. Response options range from Never (0) to Daily (6), 1 drink (1) to 10 or more drinks (7), and Never (0) to Daily (6), respectively. Higher scores are correlated with more alcohol use.
Time frame: baseline, 3-months after web-based intervention
Nicotine/tobacco use, collected via two items about nicotine products used and frequency of use, with response options ranging from Multiple times throughout the day (1) to Less than once a month (7). Lower scores are associated with more tobacco use.
Time frame: baseline, 3-months after web-based intervention
Performance enhancing drugs and supplements, collected via one question with a list of 6 performance enhancing drugs and supplements; Participants will select those used in the past three months (yes [1]/no [0]).
Time frame: baseline, 3-months after web-based intervention
Past-month cannabis use, collected via 1 question about frequency of use of cannabis products that include tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) over the past 30 days, with response options ranging from Every day (1) to Less than once per week (5), or "have not used" (0).
Trial opening soon.
Get NotifiedBoston University
Other
The Interactive Media and Gender-related Stressors and Strengths (IMAGES) Study Part 3: Feasibility Study
Acronym: IMAGES
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