Sarah C. Boyle

• PhD
• Senior Research Scientist & Director at Loyola Marymount University

Despite speculation that peers’ alcohol-related content on social media sites (SMS) may influence the alcohol use behaviors of SMS frequenting college students, this relationship has not been investigated longitudinally. The current prospective study assesses the relationship between exposure to peers’ alcohol-related SMS content and later-drinking...

Gamified interventions exploit the motivational characteristics of a game in order to provide prevention information and promote behavior change. Despite the modest effect sizes observed in increasingly popular web-based personalized normative feedback (PNF) alcohol interventions for college students, previous research has yet to consider how gamif...

Although sexual minority stress remains the dominant perspective for understanding disproportionate substance use among lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) populations, social norms are among the most predictive and commonly targeted substance use antecedents in other high-risk groups. This scoping review seeks to bring clarity to the body of norms-foc...

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...

Stigma-related stress and inflated perceptions of substance use norms are positioned in the literature as theoretically distinct explanations for disproportionate substance use among sexual minorities. As research has yet to examine how these variables may interact in an intervention context, this study examined the impact of recent experiences wit...

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...

This study examines sexual minority structural stigma in relation to drinking to cope and negative consequences in a diverse sample of sexual minority women (SMW). As previous work with this population has exclusively assessed structural stigma via state policies unsupportive to sexual minorities, we also examine whether other measures of structura...

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...

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: 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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

BACKROUND Research suggests that the social media platforms popular on college campuses may reflect, reinforce, and even exacerbate heavy drinking practices among students. The present study was designed to directly examine: (1) whether exposure to alcohol-related content on social media diminishes the efficacy of a traditional web-based personaliz...

Background: The transition to college is an important developmental phase, usually met with increased social desirability, access to alcohol, and new peer groups. Recently, research has utilized social media as a predictor of events during college, but few have assessed how social media can influence alcohol use during the transition to college. M...

Objective: Previous research has linked social media involvement and alcohol use among college students. However, this literature has been limited by self-report measures of social media use, cross-sectional data, inadequate attention to potential moderators and mediators, and unclear implications for interventions. To improve and extend this work...

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...

Background Sexual minority women are more likely to drink alcohol, engage in heavy drinking, and experience alcohol-related problems than heterosexual women. However, culturally tailored interventions for this population have been slow to emerge. Objective This type 1 effectiveness-implementation trial examines the feasibility and efficacy of a gam...

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...

BACKGROUND Sexual minority women (SMW) are more likely to drink alcohol, engage in heavy drinking, and experience alcohol-related problems than are heterosexual women. Yet, to date, culturally tailored interventions for this population have been slow to emerge. OBJECTIVE This Type I Effectiveness/Implementation Trial examines the feasibility and e...

Much research informed by the sexual minority stress model has linked stigma experienced at individual and interpersonal levels to increased alcohol use among sexual minority women. However, other recent work has adopted a social norms perspective and identified that (mis)perceptions of sexual-identity specific peer drinking norms are related to fr...

Background: Urban trails are a useful resource to promote physical activity. This study identified features of urban trails that correlated with trail use. Methods: Multiuse urban trails were selected in Chicago, Dallas, and Los Angeles. An audit of each trail was completed using the Systematic Pedestrian and Cyclist Environmental Scan for Trail...

Alcohol-related problems disproportionately impact sexual minority women. Recent research suggests that lesbian-identified women overestimate peer drinking norms and therefore, personalized normative feedback (PNF) may be an appropriate and efficacious intervention strategy for reducing alcohol-related risks in this population. To inform the develo...

Virtual copresence, or the sense of being with others in an online space, is a feeling induced on many apps and websites through user avatars and browsable profile pages. Despite the small/modest effect sizes observed in popular web-based personalized normative feedback (PNF) alcohol interventions for college students, previous research has yet to...

The current study is the first to examine the burgeoning youth practice of possessing a “Finsta” social media account to display alcohol use. A combination of the words “fake” and “Instagram,” a “Finsta,” refers to a second personal Instagram account with increased privacy settings that limits followers to only close friends, and contains explicit...

PURPOSE: Extant research has implicated undergraduates’ social media (SM) use in their alcohol use trajectories. However, reliance on self-report measures of SM use represents a major limitation as the accuracy with which students self-report their SM use is unclear. The current study examined self-reported versus actual time on SM, as well as the...

Alcohol-related problems disproportionately impact lesbian-identified women. Recent research suggests that lesbians overestimate peer drinking norms and therefore, personalized normative feedback may be an appropriate and efficacious intervention strategy for reducing alcohol-related risks in this population. To inform the development and packaging...

This talk, delivered 6/23/19 at the annual meeting of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, cross-sectionally examines relationships between stigma, sexual minority-specific drinking norms, and alcohol use in a sample of sexual minority women. Severe stigma experiences were found to both inflate perceptions of peer drinking norm...

Objective: Despite its prominence in the health communication literature, psychological reactance has rarely been considered as a factor that may undermine web-based Personalized Normative Feedback (PNF) alcohol interventions for college students. This study built on recent gamification work to examine how chance-based uncertainty, a popular game...

Objective: Osteoporosis is a costly bone disease characterized by low bone mineral density (BMD) that primarily affects postmenopausal women. One factor that may lead to osteoporosis is a failure to reach peak bone mass (PBM) in early adulthood. In older adults and animal models, heavy episodic drinking (HED) has been found to predict failure to r...

Objective: Examine 1) whether observed social reinforcements (i.e., "likes") received by peers' alcohol-related social media posts are related to first-year college students' perceptions of peer approval for risky drinking behaviors; and 2) whether associations are moderated by students' alcohol use status. Participants: First-year university st...

Our recent work (Boyle, Earle, LaBrie, & Smith, 2017) showed that the efficacy of personalized normative feedback-based (PNF) college alcohol interventions can be improved through the addition of gamified elements including points, chance, competition, and personal avatars. However, participants in that study were compensated with subject pool cred...

Studies examining representations of college drinking on social media have almost exclusively focused on Facebook. However, recent research suggests college students may be more influenced by peers' alcohol-related posts on Instagram and Snapchat, two image-based platforms popular among this demographic. One potential explanation for this different...

A randomized controlled trial tested an interactive normative feedback-based intervention—codenamed“FITSTART”—delivered to groups of 50–100 parents of matriculating college students. The 60-minsession motivated parents to alter their alcohol-related communication by correcting normative misperceptions (e.g., about how approving other parents are of...

Abstract This study examines the potential utility of Social Norms-based approaches to reduce heavy alcohol use in lesbian community settings. In a sample of 278 Southern Californian lesbians recruited from social media networks to complete an online survey, the majority of participants overestimated the quantity of alcohol consumed by their lesbia...

Background: Prepartying, or drinking before an event where more alcohol may or may not be consumed, has been positioned in the literature as a behavior engaged in by heavy drinkers. However, recent findings suggest that prepartying may confer distinct risks, potentially causing students to become heavier drinkers over time. Objectives: The goals...

Our study investigated the importance of the lesbian community and the perceived fit of personal characteristics and behavior with the norms of this community as predictors of depression and anxiety among Young Sexual Minority Women (YSMW) aged 18–35 years. YSMW (n ¼ 504) completed an online survey in which they reported their degree of identificat...

Introduction: Impulsivity has been associated with a number of negative health behaviors including substance use (Acton, 2003), overeating (Braet, Claus, Verbeken, & Van Vlierberghe, 2007) and obesity (Nederkoorna, Braetb, Van Eijsa, Tanghec,& Jansena, 2006). Several types of impulsivity exist as well as various measures of these different types. A...

Introduction: Adolescent obesity is an important public health issue, and a key factor that contributes to the problem is overeating (eating more than required for homeostasis). Appetitive behaviors such as over consumption of sweet and fatty foods may in part result from an inability to control one’s behavior when encountering rewards in the envir...

Introduction: Eating behaviors may become habitual such that certain cues trigger the behavior without conscious deliberation on the action. Cue-behavior links such as these could be important targets for interventions designed to improve dietary habits. Cues associated with consuming sweetened drinks and snacks among adolescents were identified in...

Introduction: Family characteristics such as parenting style and family functioning (e.g., cohesion, flexibility) have been associated with adolescent dietary behavior. The present study examines the association of family influences with Body Mass Index (BMI), binge eating and obesity-related dietary behaviors (e.g., sugar sweetened beverages). Fam...