Alcohol Use Behavioral Phenotyping Test for Global Populations (2025-2026)

Background

Alcohol use is a leading risk factor for premature mortality and life-long disability. Multiple biological, psychological and social factors interact with each other and contribute to harmful alcohol use. Alcohol use disorders (AUD) are associated with changes in psychological constructs such as reward prediction, reward learning and cognitive control that can be mapped to neural circuits. 

However, current AUD assessments rely on self-reports of consumption and harm. Further, any AUD assessment will face difficulties with transcultural adaptation and translinguistic translation in global health settings. The growing AUD burden in low- and middle-income countries calls for the development and translation of tools allowing for the systematic, comprehensive and coherent study of the determinants of alcohol use. 

Project Description

This project builds on the work of previous teams that created the Alcohol Use Behavioral Phenotyping Test (AUBPT), a virtual tool that uses games and tasks to assess the user’s risk of AUD. Previous teams developed computational models to explain and predict behaviors on AUBPT tasks. This team will expand on previous work to further data collection at multiple global sites and pilot the AUBPT app in Brazil, Tanzania, India and North Carolina.

Team members will deploy, evaluate and culturally adapt AUBPT in new global settings. The project will use crowdsourced samples from online recruitment platforms in addition to clinical and general population samples from the U.S. and India.

In Phase 1 of the project, data collection and content validation will take place in Maringá, Brazil; Nagpur, India; Moshi, Tanzania; and Durham, North Carolina on 15-20 general population participants. The team will collect demographic and alcohol use responses. To validate content, team members will perform semi-structured interviews on 10-12 local hospital staff and local stakeholders.

In Phase 2 of the project, the team will evaluate the validity of AUBPT task-based paradigms by gathering data from general populations in Brazil, Tanzania, India and at Duke University.

Lastly, in Phase 3 of the project, team members will implement AUBPT into clinical population samples in medical centers in India, Brazil, and Tanzania. Additionally, the project will recruit 10-12 healthcare providers to participate in semi-structured interviews after the implementation is complete to assess the implementation strategy.

Anticipated Outputs

Open-source multilingual computer application for AUBPT; global research experiences; research papers; data for NIH application; secondary data analyses of datasets from National Institute of Mental Health’s Data Archive; conference presentations

Student Opportunities

Ideally, this project team will include 4 graduate students and 4 undergraduate students from diverse backgrounds and academic and cultural experiences. All team members should have a strong interest in global mental health, an aptitude for quantitative and qualitative research methods, and enthusiasm for working with global collaborators. Graduate students should have backgrounds in psychology, neuroscience, global health, public policy, interdisciplinary data science, computer science, cognitive science or biostatistics. 

Graduate and undergraduates with a major or minor in global health, or with prior web development experience in open-source languages (e.g., Python, Java, C++) and those with an interest or background in biostatistics, theoretical neuroscience and machine learning are preferred. 

Team members will gain experience in project coordination, oversight and management, hands-on research with human participants, study design, international collaboration, systematic review and manuscript writing, data collection and presenting research in conference settings.

Undergraduate students will gain first-hand experience working in translational research and an introduction to global health. Graduate students will lead the project at the study sites, draft research papers as first/second authors and work independently on advanced data analyses.

Timing

Fall 2025 – Spring 2026

• Fall 2025: Start data analysis of Brazil Phase 1 and 2 data; complete North Carolina Phase 1 and 2 data collection; launch and complete pilot data collection in India and Tanzania
• Spring 2026: Draft manuscripts; initiate Phase 3 data collection in Brazil; initiate Phase 2 data collection in India and Brazil

Crediting

Academic credit available for fall and spring semesters

 

See earlier related team, Alcohol Use Behavioral Phenotyping Test for Global Populations (2024-2025).