The purpose of this presentation to discuss my work developing and evaluating the efficacy of brief interventions designed to reduce at-risk gambling and related negative consequences among young adults. Research has established that young adults, especially college students, are more likely to meet classification for “disordered” gambling than the general adult population (Blinn et al., 2007). Brief interventions that incorporate personalized feedback have been shown to be efficacious at motivating behavior change among young adults (Cronce & Larimer, 2011). The purpose of this presentation will be to discuss my efforts at extending this work to the area of at-risk gambling. Over the past 3 years our laboratory has conducted two clinical trials examining the efficacy of personalized feedback-based interventions among college students who exceeded a threshold for at-risk gambling. In the first trial we found that participants in a personalized-feedback condition delivered via computer reported fewer dollars wagered and fewer gambling-related problems than those in the control conditions (Martens et al., 2015). Follow-up analyses examining mediators and moderators of intervention effects will also be discussed. In the second trial, which is currently ongoing, we are examining the efficacy of delivering intervention content via smartphone. Participants in the intervention condition receive personalized feedback on their phone, and then receive subsequent follow-up text messages that contain either personalized feedback or general educational information about gambling. Preliminary findings regarding the efficacy of these interventions will be discussed, as will implications of the findings for promoting responsible gambling among young adults
