Abstract
College students are particularly vulnerable to risky alcohol use, which increases their likelihood of developing an alcohol use disorder in the future. As such, preventing and reducing alcohol use among college students should be a priority for health and social policies. This work was aimed to show that brief group-delivered MI is as effective as brief-group CBT at reducing alcohol use in college students. Eighty-nine college students (69 females; mean age = 21.01, SD = 2.85) with risky alcohol use, as measured by the AUDIT-C, were assigned to two groups, receiving three sessions of either brief group-delivered MI or CBT (bMI/bCBT). Alcohol use was assessed 3 and 6 months after the interventions, and analyzed according to an Intention-to-treat design. Changes in alcohol use at both points (relative to baseline) as well as post-intervention scores of intention to continue treatment and satisfaction with the psychologist were compared across groups, using one-sided Bayesian t-tests. Alcohol use decreased in both groups at the 3- and 6-months measurement points (relative to baseline). However, using bCBT superiority as an alternative hypothesis and the absence of such superiority as a point-null hypothesis, the Bayes factors supported the null at both the 3- and the 6-months follow-up (BF01 = 7.13, and BF01 = 5.22 respectively). Furthermore, the intention to continue treatment was substantially higher in the bMI group (BF10 = 9.77). These results are considerably robust to changes in analyses’ priors. This study suggests that bCBT is not more effective than bMI at reducing alcohol use in our college student group (in which females are overrepresented). Additionally, bMI showed higher intention to continue treatment scores. The comparable results of brief and group-delivered CBT and MI interventions in alcohol use reduction allows clinicians to select treatments based on their own skills or preferences without any detriment to efficacy.
Highlights
Harmful use of alcohol has become a severe global health problem
Differences are reported for comparisons between ITT-brief Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (bCBT) and ITT-brief Motivational Interview (bMI) participants who were assessed at 3 months, and for those who were assessed at 6 months
In both cases, the two treatment groups differed in age
Summary
Harmful use of alcohol has become a severe global health problem. Currently, 5.1% of the burden of diseases worldwide in individuals aged 15 or older is attributable to alcohol [1]. Within the young adult age group, college students stand as a vulnerable population to experiencing risky alcohol use [6,7] in comparison to their non-college counterparts [8,9]. Among the most commonly used strategies for addressing this problem, prevention programs aimed at reducing the amount of alcohol consumed is crucial with college students [12] This particular approach is appropriate as it does not force them to an abstinenceonly scenario and instead emphasizes the encouraging outcomes of alternative goals as controlled reduction in risky-drinking [13]. In addition to highlighting these types of intervention, this report as well as several studies [6,14,15] have emphasized the fact that brief interventions are preferable to traditional formats for college students
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