No abstract

Background: Behavioral economic theory predicts that low access to environmental reward is a risk factor for alcohol use disorder (AUD). The Substance-Free Activity Session (SFAS) is a behavioral economic supplement to standard brief alcohol interventions that attempts to increase environmental reward and may therefore have beneficial effects, particularly for individuals with low levels of environmental reward. Methods: Participants were 393 college students who reported at least 2 heavydrinking episodes in the past month. Participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 conditions following a baseline assessment: a standard alcohol-focused brief motivational intervention plus relaxation training session (BMI + RT), BMI plus Substance-Free Activity Session (BMI + SFAS), or an assessment-only control condition (AO). In a secondary analysis of the data from this study, we used person-centered statistical techniques to describe trajectories of alcohol severity and environmental reward over a 16-month follow-up and examined whether environmental reward levels moderated the effectiveness of the interventions. Results: Piecewise growth mixture modeling identified 2 trajectories of reward availability: low increasing (LR; n = 120) and high stable (HR; n = 273). Depressive symptoms, cannabis use, sensation seeking, and low life satisfaction were associated with a greater probability of classification in the LR trajectory. Alcohol severity was greater in the LR trajectory than the HR trajectory. For students in the LR trajectory, at 1, 6, and 12 months, BMI + SFAS led to greater increases in reward availability and reduced levels of alcohol severity compared with the BMI + RT and AO conditions and at 16 months compared with AO.Conclusions: Young adults with low levels of environmental reward are at heightened risk for greater alcohol severity and may show greater benefit from brief alcohol interventions that focus on increasing substance-free reward than individuals who are not deficient in reward availability.

Background The association between behavioral economic demand and various alcohol use outcomes is well established. However, few studies have examined whether changes in demand occur following a brief alcohol intervention (BAI), and whether this change predicts alcohol outcomes over the long term. Methods Parallel process piecewise latent growth curve models were examined in a sample of 393 heavy drinking emerging adults (60.8% women; 85.2% white; Mage = 18.77). In these models, two linear slopes represented rates of change in alcohol use, heavy drinking episodes, alcohol‐related problems, and demand (intensity and highest expenditure across all price points or Omax) from baseline to 1 month (slope 1) and 1 month to 16 months (slope 2). Mediation analyses were conducted to estimate the effect of a BAI on 16‐month alcohol outcomes through slope 1 demand. Results A two‐session BAI predicted significant reductions in all five outcomes from baseline to 1‐month follow‐up. Although no further reduction was observed from the 1‐month to the 16‐month follow‐up, there was no regression to baseline levels. Slope 1 demand intensity, but not Omax, significantly mediated the association between BAI and both outcomes—heavy drinking episodes (Est. = −0.23, SE = 0.08, p < 0.01) and alcohol‐related problems (Est. = −0.15, SE = 0.07, p < 0.05)—at the 16‐month follow‐up. Conclusions Reducing high valuation of alcohol among heavy drinking emerging adults within the first month following BAI is critical for the long‐term efficacy of the intervention. A two‐session BAI was associated with enduring reductions in alcohol demand, and the change in demand intensity, but not Omax, was associated with sustained reductions in heavy drinking and alcohol‐related problems.

We built a bid-line generator to help Federal Express perform what-if analyses of work rules during contract negotiations with ALPA, the bargaining unit for the company's pilots. The objectives were to minimize both the number of bid lines produced (a measure of required manning) and the amount of flying not assigned to bid lines (flying requirements that must be accommodated during subsequent phases of scheduling). The tool was useful in negotiations since it was automated and easily modified in-house to provide quick responses to bid line what-ifs. Using a two-step process, the tool produces a complete set of legal, flyable lines for an airplane fleet and identifies the remaining open (unscheduled) flying. First it uses simulated annealing to find as many good bid lines as possible; then it uses a greedy heuristic to complete as many more lines as possible.

High levels of 3 behavioral economic indices (delay discounting, alcohol demand, and proportionate substance-related reinforcement) are consistently associated with greater alcohol misuse and alcoholrelated problems. However, it is unclear whether and how these variables jointly increase the risk for alcohol-related outcomes among college students who engage in heavy episodic drinking (HED; 4/5ϩ drinks for women/men, respectively). The current study used a person-centered approach to identify similar patterns of behavioral economic domains among heavy-drinking college students and investigate the relationship between these empirically derived classes and alcohol-related outcomes. A sample of 393 college students (60.8% female, 78.9% White/Caucasian) reporting at least 2 heavy drinking episodes in the previous month completed measures of alcohol use and problems, demographics, delay discounting, and alcohol reward value (alcohol demand and proportionate substance-related reinforcement). Latent profile analyses revealed that a 3-class solution provided the best fit to the data: a low reward value, high discounting (LRHD) class (n ϭ 53), a moderate reward value, low discounting (MRLD) class (n ϭ 214), and a high reward value, high discounting (HRHD) class (n ϭ 126). Members of the HRHD class reported significantly greater alcohol consumption, past-month HED episodes, alcohol-related problems, and symptoms of alcohol use disorder than those in the MRLD and LRHD classes. The results suggest that there are 3 constellations of behavioral economic processes and that, consistent with the reinforcer pathology model, students who overvalue alcohol-related reward and discount the future more steeply are at the greatest risk for alcohol misuse and alcohol-related problems.