Actionable companion · Feedback & scaffolding

Learning with agency: Mobile App-Based Coaching for Alcohol Prevention among Adolescents: Pre–Post Study on the Acceptance and Effectiveness of the Program “MobileCoach Alcohol”

AI-assisted editorial implementation guide, separate from the original research. Proposed actions are not claims or recommendations attributed to the source authors. No independent peer review of this guide is asserted.

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Evidence and context

Title and abstract screening; stage labels describe reported settings, not verified numerical ages. Design labels require full-text appraisal. Reported stage(s): Secondary school. Verify the participant population and task before transferring the findings.

Original authors’ abstract, reproduced under the linked source license:

Abstract Background: At-risk alcohol use, particularly binge drinking, is widespread among adolescents and young adults in most Western countries. MobileCoach Alcohol is a mobile app-based program for alcohol prevention that provides individualized coaching using a conversational agent. The current study tested the acceptance, use, and evaluation of this newly developed program and explored its potential effectiveness. Methods: Longitudinal pre–post study among upper secondary and vocational school students in Switzerland. Within the MobileCoach Alcohol prevention program, a virtual coach motivated participants to deal with alcohol sensitively, and provided feedback on alcohol use and strategies to resist alcohol for a period of 10 weeks. Information was provided in weekly dialogs, within contests with other participants, and interactive challenges. By means of a follow-up survey after the end of the 10-week program, indicators of the use, acceptance, and effectiveness of the program were examined. Results: Between October 2020 and July 2022, the program was advertised in upper secondary and vocational schools. Recruiting schools and school classes was difficult due to the COVID-19 containment measures in place during this period. Nevertheless, the program could be implemented in 61 upper secondary and vocational school classes with a total of 954 participating students. Three out of four students who were present in the school classes participated in the MobileCoach Alcohol program and the associated study. Online follow up assessment at week 10 was completed by 272 program participants (28.4%). Based on program use and evaluations by the participants, the overall acceptance of the intervention was good. The proportion of students who engaged in binge drinking was significantly reduced from 32.7% at baseline to 24.3% at follow up. Furthermore, the longitudinal analyses revealed decreases in the maximum number of alcoholic drinks consumed on an occasion and the mean number of standard drinks per month, whereas self-efficacy to resist alcohol increased between baseline and follow up. Conclusions: The mobile app-based MobileCoach Alcohol program proved to be an attractive intervention, in which the majority of students were interested when proactively recruited at school classes. It allows for individualized coaching in large groups of adolescents and young adults and is promising for reducing at-risk alcohol use. Keywords: alcohol, prevention, students, adolescents, mobile app

What kind of evidence is this?

Conversational & pedagogical agents · Survey / observational study

Stage: Secondary school. Screening labels describe reported context and study-design language. They are not a risk-of-bias rating or proof of effectiveness for an age band.

Study methods · source passage

Vocational and upper secondary schools in the Swiss cantons of Aargau, Bern, and Zurich were invited for participation via e-mail by prevention experts from collaborating regional centers for addiction prevention. Interested teachers at the individual schools were informed about the objectives of the program. Furthermore, its implementation and procedure in the school classes were discussed. The teachers reserved a period of 20–30 min within the regular school lessons for the program implementation.

Limitations and uncertainty · source passage

The study’s main limitations include (1) a selective attrition with female participants, low-risk drinkers, and persons with high program use being more responsive. Therefore, a bias in the effectiveness and program evaluation results is possible. (2) The study was conducted in 2021/2022 during the COVID-19 pandemic, with varying restrictions that also influenced the social life and alcohol use of young people and accordingly the generalizability of the results of this study. (3) As we only included school classes that were willing to participate in the study, the results cannot be generalized to upper secondary and vocational school students in Switzerland.

Design the system before the pilot

Define whether the agent asks questions, gives hints, explains or assesses. Test hallucinated feedback, excessive praise, misleading confidence and responses when the learner is confused. A conversational interface alone does not establish autonomous agency.

Give feedback on the learner’s reasoning, then fade hints. Record whether the learner can complete the next task without that scaffold.
Measure engagement separately from achievement. Check whether novelty-driven participation persists and whether it translates to independent performance.
Use common rubrics, blind scoring where feasible and a fresh unaided reasoning task. Document permissible assistance and avoid treating AI-detector scores as proof of misconduct.

A 90-day district pilot

Days 1–15 · Appraise. Have the curriculum lead and a teacher read the methods and limitations. Record the study design, sample, comparator, outcomes and evidence gaps. Define a local question that the study can help inform.
Days 16–30 · Design. Ask learners to attempt a problem unaided, compare an agent hint, explain a revision and verify the final reasoning against a trusted source. Make the permitted use explicit for each assignment. Name an accountable owner and set the baseline, success threshold and budget before implementation.
Days 31–60 · Test. Start with a small voluntary cohort, preserve an accessible non-AI route and require teacher review. Use synthetic or de-identified examples; approve data handling and tool terms through district processes.
Days 61–90 · Decide. Measure unaided transfer and delayed retention, calibration of confidence and the ability to identify an incorrect AI explanation. Record whether help-seeking becomes answer copying. Compare with baseline, document uncertainty and stop or revise if learning worsens, access is unequal or critical errors persist.

The board decision brief

Report the learning problem, evidence quality, participating population, total cost including review time, measured benefit, errors, access differences and remaining uncertainties. Make a dated recommendation to stop, revise or expand. A positive perception survey alone does not establish learning improvement.

Attribution and reuse

Severin Haug; Nikolaos Boumparis; Andreas Wenger; Raquel Paz Castro; Michael Patrick Schaub. Mobile App-Based Coaching for Alcohol Prevention among Adolescents: Pre–Post Study on the Acceptance and Effectiveness of the Program “MobileCoach Alcohol”. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (2023-02-13). https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20043263

Companion prepared 2026-10-30. Original authorship and DOI are preserved. The abstract is an attributed source extract; the implementation plan is new AI-assisted editorial material, offered under the same CC BY 4.0 license. This guide has not undergone independent peer review.