After yesterday’s post on the EU alcohol strategy I’ve been taking a look at the research they commissioned from the Institute of Alcohol Studies.
Part of the report looks at the effectiveness of policy in reducing harm. They say that typically alcohol education has an effect on knowledge but not behaviour. However they go on to say:
A good example of a well-designed study is the School Health and Alcohol Harm Reduction Project (SHAHRP study) from Australia, which aimed to reduce alcohol related harm in secondary school students (McBride et al. 2004). The study found that the intervention group (which received eight to ten 40 to 60 minute lessons on skill-based activities to minimize harm at age 13 years, and twelve further skills based activities delivered over 5-7 weeks at age 14 years) consumed significantly less alcohol at 8-month follow-up, after the first phase of the intervention (31% difference). However, at final follow-up, 17 months after the intervention, the total amount of alcohol consumed by intervention and comparison had lessened to a 9% difference.
The report also points to work that schools can do about advertising:
Other school based initiatives have used media literacy efforts to teach young people to resist persuasive appeals of alcohol advertising, with some small positive effects (Austin and Johnson 1997) on resistance to such advertising (Slater et al. 1996) and reductions in drinking and in the number of times young people went to high-risk social environments where alcohol consumption was likely (Canzer 1996).
Looking at whether alcohol education can have more of an effect on young people’s behaviour they point to:
- adopting adequate research design;
- encouraging program planners to adopt a formative phase of development that involves talking to young people and testing the intervention with young people and teachers;
- providing the program at relevant periods in young people’s development;
- ensuring programs are interactive and based on skill development;
- setting behaviour change goals that are relevant and inclusive of all young people;
- including booster sessions in later years;
- including information that is of immediate practical use to young people;
- including appropriate teacher training for interactive delivery of the program;
- making effective programs widely available; and
- adopting marketing strategies that increase the exposure of effective programs.
They point out that improvements in design need to be delivered alongside improvements in implementatino and say:
Public investment in school alcohol education should be accompanied with both research expenditure to improve practice and with adequate training to ensure quality standards are met.
However, they are clear that school based alcohol education isn’t consistently effective as a preventative measure. The report says:
There is considerable experience of what might be best practice in school-based education programmes, but currently unconvincing evidence for their effectiveness. This is not to imply that education programmes should not be delivered, since all people do need to be informed about the use of alcohol and the harm done by it, but school based education should not be seen as the only and simple answer to reduce the harm done by alcohol.
