THURSDAY, Feb. 22, 2007 (HealthDay News) -- Practical advice and training may work best in getting college students to cut down on problem drinking, a new Swedish study finds.
The study, which is published in the March issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, analyzed 556 students living in 98 university residence halls in Sweden.
"Although Swedish university halls of residency have long been rumored to be where the greatest amount of drinking occurs at Swedish universities, this has never been put to the test," corresponding study author Henrietta Stahlbrandt, a physician in the department of clinical alcohol research at Lund University in Sweden, said in a prepared statement.
The students were assigned to one of three groups: a brief skills-training, alcohol-intervention program; a 12-step-influenced alcohol intervention program; or a control group that received no intervention.
The skills-training program included interactive lectures and discussions and was derived from the University of Washington's Brief Alcohol Screening and Intervention for College Students program. The 12-step program provided lectures by therapists trained in the 12-step approach.
Interestingly, all three groups significantly reduced their Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) scores -- meaning they drank less -- from before the study began to the end of the two-year follow-up.
"Maturity could very well be a factor," said Stahlbrandt. "It is well-known that on average, university students decrease their alcohol consumption as they grow older and eventually leave college. Yet another factor could be that inclusion in the study made all of the students more aware of their alcohol consumption, and so they subconsciously drank less."
But among the students whose AUDIT scores indicated that they engaged in high-risk alcohol consumption, the skills-training intervention appeared to be most 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 Stahlbrandt.
"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," she said.
More information
The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has more about young adult drinking.
