Evaluation of a Brief Personalised Intervention for Alcohol Consumption in College Students.

Natasha C Clarke,Matt Field,Abigail K Rose,Kent E Vrana

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0131229

Natasha C Clarke, Matt Field + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0131229

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Abstract

In the current study we investigated the effect of a brief personalised feedback intervention (BPI), compared to an active control intervention, on outcome measures of (i) alcohol consumption (ii) frequency of binge drinking and (iii) readiness to change (RTC). A sample of 103 college students (mean age=23.85) who consumed alcohol regularly provided baseline measures of drinking behaviour and readiness to change before completing an alcohol-related quiz on the UK Department of Health’s Change4Life website (active control). The study was a between subjects design and half the participants were randomly allocated to the BPI group (N=52), who received 10 minutes personalised feedback on their drinking in addition to the alcohol-related quiz. At a two-week follow-up, participants (N=103) repeated the questionnaire battery, and attempted to recall the answers to the alcohol quiz. Results indicated that both groups significantly reduced their alcohol consumption and frequency of binge drinking but there were no significant group differences in either of these measures. We conclude that the provision of generalised information can be as efficient as a BPI for the reduction of alcohol consumption in students.

Highlights

IntroductionBinge drinking, is defined as consuming double this amount (8 units for men, 6 units for women) during one drinking occasion [2]
The UK Government recommends drinking should be kept within the lower risk category of 3–4 units for men and 2–3 units for women per day (UK unit = 8 g of alcohol) [1]
MANOVA investigated whether participants across the two groups differed across independent measures

Summary

Introduction

Binge drinking, is defined as consuming double this amount (8 units for men, 6 units for women) during one drinking occasion [2]. Drinking over such guidelines is common, especially within college student populations. This issue is relevant to countries in several world regions (e.g. in Australasia, Europe, South American and North America [3]); in the US more than 80% of students drink alcohol and almost half report binge drinking in the last two weeks [4]

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