Feasibility and Effectiveness of Gamified Digital Intervention to Prevent Alcohol and Mental Health Risks

The Daily Drinking Questionnaire (DDQ) is a self-report tool measuring alcohol consumption by asking individuals to estimate the number of standard drinks consumed on each day of a typical week. Developed by Collins, Parks, and Marlatt (1985), the version used in this trial specified "a typical week during the past month".

This is a single item from the Quantity, Frequency, Max (QFM) Measure of alcohol consumption. It asks the participant to report the number of drinks consumed on their heaviest drinking occasion during the past 30 days.

This is a single item from the Quantity, Frequency, Max (QFM) Measure of alcohol consumption. It asks the participant to report how many times during the past month they consumed 4 or more drinks within a few hours.

The Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) is a 10-item, World Health Organization-developed screening tool used by clinicians to identify hazardous drinking, harmful consumption, or alcohol dependence. It covers alcohol consumption frequency, symptoms of dependence, and personal/social consequences, with scores of 8+ indicating increasing risk.

The Mental Health Inventory (MHI) provides a structured and standardized assessment of an individual's psychological adjustment across multiple dimensions (anxiety, depression, behavioral control, positive affect, and general distress) via a total of 18 scale items. It aims to quantify the degree of mental health stability, allowing clinicians and researchers to identify areas of strength and potential vulnerability in an individual's adaptive responses.

The Drinking Norms Rating Form (DNRF) is an assessment developed by Baer, Stacy, and Larimer (1991) to measure an individual's perception of peer alcohol consumption (perceived descriptive drinking norm for peer reference group). It follows the structure of the DDQ, where a number of drinks is reported for each day of a typical week during the past month. However, participants are not answering about themselves in this measure and are rather estimating the number of drinks consumed on each day by the typical woman in their age-group (i.e., late teens, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s).

The 3-item UCLA Loneliness Scale, developed by Hughes et al. (2004), is a brief, validated tool for measuring subjective feelings of loneliness and social isolation. It consists of three questions:

How often do you feel that you lack companionship? How often do you feel left out? How often do you feel isolated from others?

Response Options range from "Hardly ever" (1 point), "Some of the time" (2 points), "Often" (3 points).Total Score: The three items are summed, creating a score ranging from 3 to 9.Interpretation: While various cut-offs exist, a common interpretation is a score of 3-5 as "not lonely" and 6-9 as "lonely".T

Developed by Rand, this self-administered survey sub-scale uses a 5-point Likert scale (none to all of the time) to evaluate the availability of emotional and informational support