The Efficacy of the Alcooquizz App to Reduce Hazardous Alcohol Consumption: Randomized Controlled Trial

New technologies offer potential ways to provide and deliver preventative interventions. With respect to unhealthy alcohol use, offering people tools to assess and manage their risk at any given time using their smartphone may represent an additional opportunity to disseminate preventative interventions. Nevertheless, there is a lack of knowledge on the acceptability and efficacy of smartphone applications for unhealthy alcohol use. Alcooquizz, a smartphone app, has been previously evaluated using a before/after design without randomization, with participants reporting reductions in drinking over time. The current trial proposes to conduct an RCT, comparing reductions in alcohol consumption between participants provided access to Alcooquizz to a no intervention control.

Participants will be recruited through Amazon's MTurk crowdsourcing platform. Potential participants identified as problem drinkers based on an initial survey will be invited to complete another survey in 6 months time. Those who agree to be followed-up will be randomized to be provided a link to download the Alcooquizz app or to a no link control condition. At six-months post-baseline, the MTurk portal will be used to send invitation emails that contain a link to the follow-up survey that asks about their drinking and their impressions of the app. The primary hypothesis to be tested is that participants receiving access to the Alcooquizz app will report a greater level of reduction in number of drinks in a typical week between the baseline survey and six-month follow-up as compared to participants in the no information control condition.