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Internet-based alcohol advice helps risky drinkers cut back

January 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment

With other similar work, this Canadian study suggests that internet-based programs which offer feedback to the user on their drinking in relation to the population and on the risks they may be running can lead to drinking reductions of the same order as face-to-face advice.

Extract

Conducted in Ontario in Canada, unlike most previous trials the featured study sought to replicate the conditions under which internet interventions would normally be used: by adults from the general population without face-to-face guidance, in their own homes or wherever else they chose.

Just over 60% of those offered access to the program actually logged on, but the analysis included everyone regardless of whether they took up the offer. As hoped, at three and six months after the start of the study, they had reduced their AUDIT-C scores and their typical weekly alcohol consumption by significantly more than the control group – a finding entirely due to the 39% of the sample whose high AUDIT scores indicated that they were problem drinkers.

This study is at least as convincing as other studies generally accepted as indicative of the effectiveness of the interventions they tested. With some other work, it suggests that internet-based programs which offer feedback to the user on their drinking in relation to the population and on the risks they may be running can have a short-term (up to six months) impact on drinking.

Read the full story at our partner site Drug and Alcohol Findings

Filed Under: Alcohol Findings Tagged With: , ,
About Mike Ashton

Mike Ashton is the editor of Drug and Alcohol Findings, a collaborative project involving the National Addiction Centre, DrugScope and Alcohol Concern.

It produced the world’s only magazine devoted to evaluations of the effectiveness of alcohol and drug interventions and now offers a similar service from its web site Findings.

Previously he produced the first two Annual Reports on the State of the Drugs Problem in the European Union for the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction and Juice, a magazine for drug users in the UK. His background was 20 years at the Institute for the Study of Drug Dependence, then the UK’s information service on the misuse of drugs, where he was became co-responsible for publications and founded the Druglink magazine. He edited the magazine for 10 years until leaving the Institute in 1995.

Until standing down in 2003 he also chaired (and remains a board member for) T3E UK, a charity especially concerned with race and drugs issues on which it provides training, research and consultancy.

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