Web-based screening, interventions ‘help fight alcoholism in undergrads’
September 15th, 2009 - 5:09 pm ICT by ANIWashington, Sept 15 (ANI): Web-based screening and personalized interventions can help fight the menace of alcoholism among undergraduate students, say researchers.
Young people at university have a particularly high prevalence of unhealthy alcohol use, and have been found to drink more heavily and to exhibit more clinically significant alcohol-related problems than their non-student peers.
Dr. Kypros Kypri, of the University of Newcastle, Callaghan, New South Wales, Australia and the University of Otago, New Zealand, and colleagues analysed results from a 2007 Web-based Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test taken by 7,237 undergraduate university students (ages 17 to 24) in Australia.
The participants who scored in the hazardous/harmful drinking range were placed in either a Web-based intervention group, which received motivational assessments and personalized feedback or a control group, which received no feedback.
“After one month, participants receiving intervention drank less often, smaller quantities per occasion and less alcohol overall than did controls,” said the authors.
“Differences in alcohol-related harms were nonsignificant. At six months, intervention effects persisted for drinking frequency and overall volume but not for other variables.
“Given the scale on which proactive Web-based electronic screening and brief intervention (e-SBI) can be delivered and its acceptability to student drinkers, we can be optimistic that a widespread application of this intervention would produce a benefit in this population group,” they added.
The study appears in Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. (ANI)
- More than third of Oz university students drink to harmful levels - Sep 20, 2009
- Personalised feedback on drinking behaviours could reduce alcohol misuse - Jul 08, 2009
- College students less likely to drink if they know peers' actual habits - Jul 10, 2009
- Scientists call for ban on alcohol-industry sponsorship of sport - Nov 10, 2009
- Alcohol industry should not sponsor sports, say scientists - Nov 10, 2009
- Risky alcohol-related driving behavior becomes worse at age 21 - Jun 01, 2010
- Alcohol-related traffic-risk behaviour worse at 21 years - Jun 01, 2010
- Alcohol addiction more likely among those it peps up - Apr 05, 2011
- Red wine's benefits for heart overestimated? - Sep 20, 2011
- Software to stop you writing e-mails when drunk - Nov 12, 2010
- Adult-supervised drinking in teens may up alcohol use - Apr 29, 2011
- Kids offered alcohol by people other than parents '6 times likelier to binge' - Nov 08, 2010
- Energy drink intake may lead to alcohol dependence - Nov 17, 2010
- Alcohol 'can make you happy or sad depending on your genetic make-up' - Apr 05, 2011
- Raise alcohol prices to save lives: British doctors - Dec 14, 2011
Tags: alcohol related problems, ani web, archives of internal medicine, electronic screening, fight alcoholism, intervention effects, intervention group, jama, kypros kypri, new south wales, new south wales australia, otago new zealand, population group, south wales australia, student drinkers, students ages, undergraduate university students, university of newcastle, university of otago, university of otago new zealand
