NCT04207528

Campus Life Study: Harnessing Generativity Among Young Adults

Completed NA Last updated 12 February 2020

What this trial tests

NA trial testing Writing in Healthy Young Adults in 165 participants. Completed in 10 February 2020.

Timeline

6 January 2020

Primary endpoint
10 February 2020

10 February 2020

Quick facts

Lead sponsor	University of California, Los Angeles
Phase	NA
Status	Completed
Study type	INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation	randomized
Design	parallel
Masking	none
Primary purpose	basic science
Enrollment	165
Start date	6 January 2020
Primary completion	10 February 2020
Estimated completion	10 February 2020
Sites	1 location across United States

Drugs / interventions tested

• Writing

Conditions studied

• Healthy Young Adults — all drugs for Healthy Young Adults →

Sponsor

University of California, Los Angeles

Who can join

18 and older, any sex, with Healthy Young Adults. Patients with the condition only — healthy volunteers not accepted.

Sponsor's own description

Recent research suggests that short, online interventions can enhance well-being, which is beneficial to both physical and mental health outcomes. Further, growing evidence suggests that prosocial behavior-a behavior that can be reliably manipulated through a short online intervention-may have beneficial effects on well-being and physical health. Giving support to others appears to be just as beneficial as receiving support, and asking people to perform kind acts for others over the course of several weeks, for example, has been shown to both increase well-being and reduce the inflammatory potential of immune cells.

The purpose of the current study is to test a novel 3-week, online prosocial writing-based intervention in a sample of young adults. Previous intervention studies have manipulated prosocial behavior by asking participants to perform tangible acts of kindness for others, such as writing a note to a coworker or helping a neighbor. However, providing this type of direct support can be logistically challenging and may contribute to increased feelings of distress in certain contexts. Writing interventions designed to elicit feelings of generativity offer one alternative approach, though they have yet to be tested among young adults.

Participants (n = 200) will be randomized to one of two conditions--peer helping or a facts-only control--and instructed to write about their experiences in their first-year at UCLA (freshman or first-year after transfer). Those in the peer helping will be asked to write for the benefit of a student who is about to begin their first year, whereas those in the facts-only control will not. In total, participants will complete 4 writing assignments, each on a separate day over the course of one week. Valid self-report measures will be assessed at pre-intervention, each writing session, post-intervention, and at the 2-week follow-up. The investigators expect participants in the peer helping condition to experience a greater increase in well-being (primary outcome) across the intervention and the follow-up when compared to the control condition. Secondary outcomes will include depressive symptoms, anxiety, loneliness, physical symptoms, social support, and generativity. As an exploratory aim, will also assess several moderators (i.e., psychological distress, prosocial tendencies, generativity) and mediators (i.e., fulfillment of psychological needs, positive affect) of the intervention effects.

Publications & conference data

No peer-reviewed publications indexed yet for this trial. Completed trials usually publish results within 12-18 months.