An Appearance-Based Intervention to Reduce Teen Skin Cancer Risk (iSTART)

• Indoor Tanning Behavior [ Time Frame: 18 months ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
  Self-report measure of the number of times the teenager has indoor tanned over 3, 6, 12 and 18 month time periods. The self-report measure has been validated in previous studies.
  
  
• Indoor tanning intentions [ Time Frame: 18 months ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
  A validated measure of the teenagers intentions to use indoor tanning in the next 3, 6 and 12 months.
  
  

• Indoor tanning attitudes [ Time Frame: 1 year ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
  Validated measure of how positively the teenager feels about indoor tanning
  
  
• Indoor tanning social norms [ Time Frame: 1 year ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
  Validated measure of how positively the teenager's friends and family feel about indoor tanning and how often their peers and family indoor tans themselves.
  
  

The project is designed to improve the understanding of, and ability to affect UV risk behavior in teenage populations. The International Agency for Research in Cancer classifies indoor tanning as "carcinogenic to humans." There is evidence that female indoor tanning use increases dramatically from freshman to senior years of high school (e.g., 25-40% of older high school girls) making high school a critical time period for anti-tanning interventions to be carried out. This proposal assesses the effectiveness of a skin cancer prevention website for a nationally representative sample of high school teens in a randomized controlled trial. Teens exposed to the website will report reduced indoor tanning intentions, frequency and overall percentage of users while increasing sun protective behaviors at long-term (i.e 18 month) follow-up.