Mobile phone sensors and
supervised machine learning to
identify alcohol use events in young
adults
I. INTRODUCTION
Binge alcohol consumption, which is defined
as having > 4/5 drinks (women/men) each
occasion, is a major but avoidable public
health concern, with young persons
disproportionately impacted (Center for
Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality,
2016). Digital interventions are a potential
way to prevent excessive alcohol intake, with
greatest evidence for efficacy in young adults
(Carey et al., 2012, Fowler et al., 2016). Still,
impacts of digital treatments are often minor
(Berman et al., 2016, Suffoletto et al., 2015),
suggesting that designs are not optimal.
To promote longitudinal engagement and
impacts of digital interventions, the relevant
support material should be supplied to the
right individual at the right time (Nahum-
Shani et al., 2016). Therefore, a digital
intervention aimed at reducing binge drinking
should deliver support ?in the moment?, that
is, in the context of a drinking episode to
enhance motivation for setting and keeping
drinking limits, and to reduce the likelihood
of negative alcohol-related consequences
(i.e., reinforce explicit intentions). To attain
these aims, it is vital that a digital
intervention be able to recognize when the
person is drinking.
Alcohol drinking amongst young adults is a
prevalent and complicated issue with
substantial implications for health, safety, and
social well-being. This group, often aged
between 18 and 25 years, experiences distinct
obstacles and pressures that lead to the
normalization and acceptability of excessive
drinking practices. Whether motivated by
peer pressure, societal standards, or cultural
factors, the frequency of intense episodic
drinking, popularly known as binge drinking,
remains dangerously high among young
adults.
Traditional techniques of tracking alcohol
intake depend mainly on self-report
measures, retrospective surveys, or laboratory
testing, all of which have inherent flaws and
biases. Self-reported data are vulnerable to
memory recall biases, social desirability
effects, and underreporting, particularly
among those who may feel stigmatized or
ashamed of their drinking patterns.
Laboratory-based alcohol testing, while more
objective, is sometimes impracticable for
capturing real-world drinking habits and
settings. Furthermore, the difficulty, expense,
and invasiveness of standard monitoring
systems restrict their general acceptance and
efficacy in tracking alcohol consumption in
realistic situations.
Recent improvements in sensor downsizing
enable the potential to gather multi-modal
data constantly from mobile phones with
minimum participant burden. Continuous
smartphone sensing can gather time-stamped
data pieces that can be used to follow a
person's daily routine in line with a computer
science-based ?context aware? theoretical
framework (Abowd et al., 1999). Phone
sensor data has been demonstrated to be
beneficial in inferring other states such as
emotion (Mohr, Zhang, & Schueller, 2017).
Still, it remains uncertain if phone sensors
may be beneficial in detecting times of
drinking.
In prior work (Bae et al., 2017), we discussed
the computer engineering procedures
involved in leveraging phone sensors for
detection of drinking periods. In this study,
we expand upon existing work by detailing
how sensor properties alter across periods of
high-risk (e.g., binge) drinking, low-risk
drinking, and non-drinking. We hypothesized
that phone sensor features related to time
(Del Boca, Darkes, Greenbaum, & Goldman,
2004), movement patterns (Freisthler et al.,
2014, Gruenewald et al., 2014),
communication (Cavazos-Rehg et al., 2015,
Moewaka Barnes et al., 2016), and
psychomotor impairment (Scholey et al.,
2012, Suffoletto et al., 2017, Suffoletto et al.,
2017) would contribute to detection models.
We also evaluated the time it takes for
machine learning models to attain stability in
accuracy, and variations in model
performance on weekends vs weekdays. We
highlight implications of our findings for
delivery of just-in-time mobile solutions.
II. LITERARUTE REVIEW
The combination of mobile phone sensors
and supervised machine learning algorithms
has opened up new options for monitoring
and intervening in alcohol consumption
habits among young adults. This section
presents a detailed overview of the current
literature, concentrating on research that have
examined the usage of mobile phone sensors
and machine learning algorithms for
recognizing alcohol consumption episodes
and offering just-in-time adaptive
interventions (JTAIs).
1. Mobile Phone Sensors for Alcohol
Monitoring:
Mobile phones are equipped with an array of
sensors that may collect numerous
behavioral, physiological, and environmental
variables related to alcohol intake.
Accelerometers, GPS, microphones, and
ambient light sensors, among others, give
potential for passive monitoring of behaviors
related with drinking episodes. For instance,
alterations in mobility patterns, geographical
trajectories, speech traits, and social
interactions have been associated to alcohol
use episodes.
Several studies have established the
feasibility and usefulness of employing
mobile phone sensors for alcohol monitoring.
Bae et al. (2017) created a mobile application
named "ALCO-Check" that employs the
smartphone's accelerometer and microphone
to identify drinking episodes based on
changes in movement and sound patterns
associated with pouring and consuming
alcohol. The system exhibited great accuracy
in detecting alcohol consumption events in
laboratory conditions and showed potential
for real-world applications.
Similarly, Canzian and Musolesi (2015)
examined GPS and accelerometer data from
participants' smartphones to estimate alcohol
consumption patterns based on mobility
behaviors and activity levels. By employing
machine learning approaches, they were able
to discern between times of drinking and non-
drinking with excellent accuracy,
demonstrating the potential of passive
sensing for alcohol monitoring in realistic
situations.
2. Supervised Machine Learning for Event
Detection:
Supervised machine learning algorithms play
a significant role in processing and evaluating
the data obtained from mobile phone sensors
to identify alcohol consumption events. By
training models on labeled datasets including
instances of drinking episodes and non-
events, machine learning algorithms may
learn to spot patterns and categorize new data
accordingly.
A number of supervised learning approaches
have been applied to alcohol event detection,
including support vector machines (SVM),
random forests, and deep neural networks.
For example, Sarker et al. (2016) deployed
SVM classifiers to identify episodes of heavy
drinking based on characteristics retrieved
from smartphone sensor data, obtaining
excellent sensitivity and specificity in
detecting alcohol consumption events.
Deep learning techniques, such as
convolutional neural networks (CNN) and
recurrent neural networks (RNN), have also
showed potential in alcohol event detection
tasks. Liu et al. (2019) built a deep learning
system that integrates accelerometer and GPS
data from smartphones to automatically
detect drinking episodes in real-time. The
model displayed improved performance
compared to typical machine learning
techniques, showing the promise of deep
learning for alcohol monitoring applications.
3. Implications for Just-in-Time Adaptive
Interventions (JTAIs):
The combination of mobile phone sensors
and supervised machine learning for alcohol
monitoring has important implications for the
development of just-in-time adaptive
treatments (JTAIs). JTAIs are individualized
intervention methods supplied via mobile
technology at opportune periods to address
specific behavioral difficulties or triggers.
By utilizing real-time data from mobile
phone sensors, JTAIs can give timely and
contextually relevant treatments to persons at
risk of excessive drinking. For example,
when a drinking incident is recognized, the
mobile phone might offer targeted messages,
reminders, or coping skills to assist the user
make healthier choices or minimize alcohol
intake. Additionally, JTAIs may alter
intervention delivery based on contextual
information such as location, time of day,
social setting, and mood, maximizing
intervention efficacy.
III. PROPOSED METHODOLOGY
The suggested methodology intends to
employ mobile phone sensors and supervised
machine learning techniques to identify
alcohol consumption episodes in young
adults and study the implications for just-in-
time adaptive treatments (JTAIs). This
section explains the essential phases involved
in the research process, including data
collection, preprocessing, feature extraction,
model training, and assessment.
1. Data Collection:
The first phase involves gathering data from
young adult participants using mobile phone
applications specialized for alcohol
monitoring. Participants will be recruited
from varied demographic backgrounds,
including college students, young
professionals, and persons from varying
socioeconomic positions. Data collection will
require getting informed consent from
participants and verifying adherence to
ethical rules for human subjects research.
The mobile phone application will passively
gather sensor data, including accelerometer,
GPS, microphone, and ambient light sensor
readings, at regular intervals (e.g., every
minute). Participants will be instructed to
bring their cellphones with them while they
go about their everyday activities, including
social engagements, gatherings, and leisure
activities that may entail alcohol use.
2. Preprocessing:
Once the data is acquired, preparation
activities will be undertaken to clean and
prepare the dataset for analysis. This may
entail filtering out noise and anomalies from
sensor readings, such as outliers and
erroneous data points. Additionally, data
from disparate sensors may be synced and
aligned to provide temporal coherence across
modalities.
Normalization techniques may also be
utilized to normalize sensor readings and
decrease variability between people and
equipment. Missing data imputation methods
will be employed to manage any gaps or
pauses in data gathering, maintaining
continuity and completeness of the dataset.
3. Feature Extraction:
Feature extraction plays a critical role in
discovering significant patterns and traits
linked with alcohol consumption occurrences.
Features will be retrieved from the
preprocessed sensor data utilizing domain-
specific algorithms and signal processing
techniques.
For accelerometer data, variables such as
movement intensity, frequency domain
measurements, and patterns of physical
activity will be retrieved to identify variations
in movement patterns indicative of alcohol
intake. GPS data will be examined to extract
location-based information, including venue
kinds, proximity to alcohol-serving locations,
and travel trajectories related with drinking
activities.
Microphone data will be examined to extract
acoustic parameters linked to speech patterns,
voice characteristics, and background noise
levels during probable drinking episodes.
Ambient light sensor measurements may give
contextual information regarding the time of
day and environmental circumstances linked
with alcohol usage incidents.
4. Model Training and Evaluation:
Supervised machine learning algorithms will
be trained on the retrieved characteristics to human subjects research. Measures will be
construct predictive models for alcohol made to safeguard participant data, including
incident detection. A range of classification encryption, anonymization, and secure
techniques, including support vector storage procedures.
machines (SVM), random forests, and deep
neural networks, will be studied to discover
the best successful strategy for the problem.

The dataset will be separated into training,

validation, and test sets to train and assess the
performance of the machine learning models.
Cross-validation approaches, such as k-fold
cross-validation, will be applied to test model
generalization and resilience.

Model performance will be assessed using

measures such as accuracy, sensitivity,
specificity, area under the receiver operating
characteristic curve (AUC-ROC), and F1
score. Additionally, qualitative assessments
may be undertaken to evaluate the
interpretability and clinical significance of
the observed alcohol consumption episodes.

5. Implications for Just-in-Time Adaptive

Interventions (JTAIs):

The findings from the machine learning

models will influence the creation of just-in-
time adaptive interventions (JTAIs) aimed at
lowering dangerous drinking habits among
young adults. Based on the observed alcohol
consumption episodes, targeted interventions
will be offered via the mobile phone
application to provide timely assistance,
information, and resources to persons at risk.

Interventions may include individualized

feedback messages, coping tactics,
mindfulness exercises, or connections to
support resources based on individual
preferences and requirements. Contextual
information such as location, time of day,
social environment, and mood may be
utilized to adapt intervention delivery and
enhance efficacy.

6. Ethical Considerations:

Throughout the study process, ethical

concerns will be crucial to preserve
participant privacy, confidentiality, and
autonomy. Informed permission will be
sought from all participants, and data
collecting techniques will comply to relevant
privacy rules and institutional norms for