Bradley Marck Trager

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Research Scientist at Loyola Marymount University

Background Recent reports indicate that simultaneous alcohol and marijuana (SAM) use is a growing health concern among college students. As SAM use consists of both alcohol and marijuana, risk factors associated with either can serve as plausible targets by prevention efforts to reduce SAM use. Objectives: To explore this, the current study investi...

Parent-based interventions (PBIs) and living at home with one’s parents both have been shown to mitigate alcohol risk associated with the first year of college. The current study extends these findings by examining the independent and interactive effects of these two constructs on first-year drinking. The sample included 82 parent-student dyads. Pa...

Previous research has shown a reliable association between social media (SM) use and drinking among college students. However, most studies have investigated SM behaviors (e.g., time spent on a platform, posting frequency) in isolation and on a single site. While some have studied multiple SM behaviors across platforms using person-centered approac...

Objective: We examined (a) whether changes in parent-student phone call and text messaging communication during the transition into college are associated with alcohol use and related consequences, and (b) whether pre-matriculation drinking patterns predicted these changes in parent-student communication. Method: First-year students (N=246; Mage...

Objective: This study evaluated FITSTART+, a parent-based intervention (PBI), for preventing risky drinking among first-year college students. Participants: Participants were traditional first-year students aged between 17 and 20. Method: In total, 391 eligible students completed a baseline survey and their parents were then invited to use the FITS...

Objective: Previous work has investigated parents' reports of motives for communicating with their young adults about alcohol. While parents' self-reported motives may predict intentions to communicate, young adults' perceptions of their parents' motives may be important for understanding young adults' responses to parent alcohol communication. Th...

Most alcohol intervention research focuses on program efficacy, yet few studies have investigated the acceptability of a program’s design and implementation to the target population or adapting existing alcohol interventions to different populations. To address these gaps in the literature, we (1) examined participant responsiveness to and implemen...

Objective: Although previous research has established that students who perceive that their parents have lower drinking limits consume less alcohol, optimal approaches for effectively communicating these limits are less understood. To address this gap in the literature, the present study examined the effects of hypothetical limit-focused text mess...

Parent communication can be protective against cannabis use among young adults. However, changes in parent-student communication frequency naturally occur during the transition from high school to college. Recent research suggests declines in parent-student communication frequency predict increased drinking and consequences during the first year of...

Background: Depression is prevalent among adolescents and young adults and is associated with experiencing increased negative alcohol-related consequences; thus, it is imperative to identify malleable protective factors for alcohol risks in young adults experiencing elevated depressive symptoms. The current study longitudinally explored the effect...

Purpose: It is unclear why parents avoid discussing alcohol use with their emerging adult (EA) children. Understanding parents' reasons for not communicating could inform parent-based interventions (PBIs) aimed at encouraging constructive discussions. The current study adds to the literature by examining common reasons parents avoid discussing alc...

Objective: Whether college students' reports of their parents' behaviors are as reliable a predictor of student drinking as their parents' own reports remains an open question and a point of contention in the literature. To address this, the current study examined concordance between college student and mother/father reports of the same parenting...

While adolescents and underage emerging adults typically obtain alcohol from social sources (e.g., parents, friends, parties), taking alcohol from the home without permission is not well understood. The current study investigated plausible individual characteristics associated with taking alcohol from one’s parents’ home without permission and asso...

Parents of young adults may approve of their child drinking in lower risk drinking situations (LRDS) because they believe it will prevent their child from drinking in more risky ways. However, when young adults believe their parents approves of drinking in LRDS they experience more negative alcohol consequences, not less. A plausible explanation fo...

Public health researchers are increasingly interested in the potential relationships between social media (SM) use, well-being, and health behavior among adolescents. However, most research has assessed daily SM time via self-report survey questions, despite a lack of clarity around the accuracy of such reports given the current tendency of youth t...

Background: The purpose of this study was to address a dearth in the literature on non-response bias in parent-based interventions (PBIs) by investigating parenting constructs that might be associated with whether a parent volunteers to participate in a no-incentive college drinking PBI. Method: Incoming first-year students (N = 386) completed an o...

Background Sexual minority women disproportionately engage in heavy drinking and shoulder the burden of alcohol dependence. Although several intensive interventions are being developed to meet the needs of treatment-seeking sexual minority women, there remains a lack of preventive interventions to reduce drinking and its consequences among women no...

Building on Junco’s (2013) study examining the accuracy of self-reported computer-specific time on Facebook, the current study investigates the accuracy of self-reported time on multiple social media (SM) platforms across multiple electronic devices and evaluates whether reporting accuracy is systematically associated with participant sex, individu...

Social media (SM) users are a combination of several behaviors across platforms. Patterns of SM use across platforms may be a better indicator of risky drinking than individual behaviors or sets of behaviors examined previously. This longitudinal study addressed this gap in the literature using latent profile analysis (LPA) to identify subpopulatio...

Selection effects have been found in health intervention research but have not yet been examined in parent-based alcohol interventions (PBIs). Investigating such effects has been difficult because previous PBI research has only invited specific parents to participate and offered them compensation. The current study investigated selection effects us...

BACKGROUND Sexual minority women (SMW) disproportionately engage in heavy drinking and shoulder the burden of alcohol dependence. Although several intensive interventions are being developed to meet the needs of treatment-seeking SMW, there remains a lack of preventative interventions able to reduce drinking and consequences among women not yet mot...

Past research has explored the content and frequency of alcohol-specific communication between parents and their emerging adult children. The current study aimed to address a gap in the research by examining parents' motivation for discussing alcohol. To accomplish this, we developed a multidimensional Parent Motives for Alcohol Communication Scale...

Previous research suggests that exposure to alcohol-related content on social media sites (SMSs) may inflate perceptions of drinking norms, thereby increasing drinking among college students and potentially undermining popular social norms-based alcohol interventions. However, prior research on exposure has used subjective measures of alcohol expos...

Objective This study explored the burgeoning youth practice of possessing a fake, secondary Instagram account known as a “Finsta” in relation to exposure to alcohol-related content and college drinking. Participants First-year university students with at least a primary Instagram account (N = 296) completed online surveys. Method Surveys assessed...

The parental rules toward drinking questionnaire (PRQ; Van der Vorst et al., 2005) assesses strictness toward adolescent drinking situations. The aim of the current study was to address a gap in the literature on the psychometric testing and evaluation of the factor structure of the PRQ. The current sample consisted of Dutch adolescents (N = 2922)...

This event-level study examined within-person differences in consequences for college students who engaged in alcohol-only, marijuana-only, or simultaneous alcohol and marijuana (SAM) use across 18 weekend days. Participants (n = 451) were asked to report consequences they experienced on each occasion across five different types of events: (a) heav...

The present study used a prospective longitudinal design to examine whether willingness to experience negative alcohol-related consequences mediated the effects of personality on consequences (e.g., blacking out, getting into a fight, and regretted sex). Students (N = 2024) were assessed at three time points: fall semester of the students' first ye...

Importance Despite receiving dermatologic care, many patients with or without a history of skin cancer either do not use sun protection or fail to use it in an effective manner. Objective To examine the association of a brief dermatologist-delivered intervention vs usual care with patient satisfaction and sun protection behavior. Design, Setting,...

The current study examined two research aims: (1) Identify latent statuses of college students who share common patterns of single or repeated experiences with distinct types of negative alcohol-related consequences during the first two years of college; and (2) Examine how changes in students' living arrangements were associated with transitions i...

Background: The comorbidity of depressed mood and college student drinking causes consequences for both the individual and society. Aspects of parenting have been shown to be important for college students' well-being. While some interventions are beginning to address this population, few studies have examined how parental monitoring impacts the r...

Introduction: Research has identified college students who experience depressed mood and consume alcohol are at an increased risk for experiencing alcohol problems. The present study identified profiles of differential alcohol use, depression, key psychosocial indicators of drinking (e.g., normative perceptions) and examined the relationship betwe...