New Report Shows That Alcohol Interventions That Teach Practical Skills Effective for High-Risk College Students

A new Swedish study indicates that students who engage in high-risk alcohol consumption benefit the most from a skills-training program. Results are published in the March issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

In the year 2000, researchers at Lund University in Sweden began an analysis of 556 students living in 98 university halls of residence who were participating in one of two alcohol-intervention programs. One program, a brief skills-training program (BSTP) with interactive lectures and discussions, was derived from the University of Washington’s Brief Alcohol Screening and Intervention for College Students. The second program, a 12-step influenced program (TSI), provided lectures by therapists trained in the 12-step approach. Study authors also created a control group of students. All participants completed a baseline assessment, as well as follow-up questionnaires one, two and three years following the baseline year.

Findings indicate that all three groups significantly reduced their Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) scores from baseline assessment to the two-year follow-up questionnaire. However, among those students deemed to engage in high-risk alcohol consumption – defined as AUDIT scores of eight or above for men and four or above for women – brief alcohol screening and interventions appeared to be more effective.

“The at-risk students – those with a higher AUDIT score and in greater danger of having negative consequences from alcohol consumption – in the brief skills-training program reduced their consumption more than the other two groups,” said Henriettæ Ståhlbrandt, a physician in the department of clinical alcohol research at Lund University in Sweden, and corresponding author for the study. “By concentrating alcohol-intervention efforts on this group, a lot of benefits can be attained on both individual and public levels, meaning less of an economic burden and wasted personal time.”

Funding for this Addiction Science Made Easy project is provided by the Addiction Technology Transfer Center National Office, under the cooperative agreement from the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment of SAMHSA.