# Leveraging Natural Language Processing to Evaluate Young Adults’ User Experiences with a Digital Sleep Intervention for Alcohol Use

## TL;DR

This study used NLP to evaluate how young adults experienced a digital sleep intervention aimed at reducing alcohol use, finding that personalized feedback and sleep improvement were key motivators.

## Contribution

The novel use of NLP in combination with mixed methods to evaluate digital health interventions for alcohol use.

## Key findings

- Participants in the CIAN group found personalized feedback and coaching most helpful for reducing alcohol risk.
- NLP analysis revealed that sleep improvement, rather than alcohol reduction, was the main motivator for participants.
- Digital sleep interventions were found to be acceptable and effective, with high adherence and satisfaction across all groups.

## Abstract

Evaluating user experiences with digital interventions is critical to increase uptake and adherence, but traditional methods have limitations. We incorporated natural language processing (NLP) with convergent mixed methods to evaluate a personalized feedback and coaching digital sleep intervention for alcohol risk reduction: ‘Call it a Night’ (CIAN; N = 120). In this randomized clinical trial with young adults with heavy drinking, control conditions were A + SM: web-based advice + active and passive monitoring; and A: advice + passive monitoring. Findings converged to show that the CIAN treatment condition group found feedback and coaching most helpful, whereas participants across conditions generally found advice helpful. Further, most participants across groups were interested in varied whole-health sleep-related factors besides alcohol use (e.g., physical activity), and many appreciated increased awareness through monitoring with digital tools. All groups had high adherence, satisfaction, and reported feasibility, but participants in CIAN and A + SM reported significantly higher effectiveness than those in A. NLP corroborated positive sentiments across groups and added critical insight that sleep, not alcohol use, was a main participant motivator. Digital sleep interventions are an acceptable, novel alcohol treatment strategy, and improving sleep and overall wellness may be important motivations for young adults. Further, NLP provides an efficient convergent method for evaluating experiences with digital interventions.