Comparing the Efficacy of the Alcohol Help Centre and Check Your Drinking to a no Intervention Control Condition

Comparing the Efficacy of the Alcohol Help Centre and Check Your Drinking to a no Intervention Control Condition: Randomized Controlled Trial

Alcohol is one of the leading contributors to premature mortality and disability. Most people with alcohol problems will never seek treatment. There is a need to develop alternate ways to help problem drinkers outside of formal treatment settings.

One promising strategy is Internet-based interventions for problem drinkers. Our recently completed RCT comparing a brief (Check Your Drinking; CYD) versus an extended (Alcohol Help Centre; AHC) Internet intervention for problem drinkers found that, while there was a reduction in drinking across time for both interventions, there was no significant (p > .05) difference in reductions in drinking between the two interventions. Based on these results, it is not justifiable to say that either intervention 'worked' as there was no comparison condition of participants who received no active intervention. The current trial proposes to address this limitation by conducting an RCT comparing the CYD, AHC, and a no intervention control condition.

Participants will be recruited through Amazon's MTurk crowdsourcing platform. Participants identified as problem drinkers based on an initial survey will be invited to complete another survey in 6 months time. Those who are interested will be randomized to receive access to the Check Your Drinking screener (CYD condition), Alcohol Help Centre (AHC condition) or a feedback questionnaire (control condition). At six-months post-baseline, the MTurk portal will be used to send invitation emails that contain a link to the follow-up survey. The primary hypothesis to be tested is that participants receiving access to the AHC intervention will report a greater reduction in AUDIT-C scores and in number of drinks in a typical week than participants in the CYD intervention. Further, participants in the CYD condition will report a greater level of reduction AUDIT-C scores and in number of drinks in a typical week between the baseline survey and six-month follow-up as compared to participants in the no intervention control condition.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Alcohol Consumption
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: CYD; Behavioral: AHC

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 511
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• Canada
  • Ontario
    • Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 2S1
      • Centre for Addiction and Mental Health

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 18 years and older (Adult, Older Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• 18 years of age or over
• A score of 8 or over on the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT)
• Typically consumes 15 or more drinks per week,
• Willingness to complete a 6-month follow-up survey

Exclusion Criteria:None

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Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Other
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: Single

Number of Arms

3

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
No Intervention: Control; A questionnaire that asks individuals what components of an online intervention they might find useful.
Experimental: Check Your Drinking (CYD); Internet based program of lower intensity as compared to the "Alcohol Help Centre. It was designed to provide personalized normative feedback aimed at motivating reductions in drinking	Behavioral: CYD
Experimental: Alcohol Help Centre (AHC); Internet based program of higher intensity as compared to the "Check Your Drinking" intervention. It was designed to assesses drinking patterns, increase self-awareness of individual triggers, and set and achieve goals regarding drinking.	Behavioral: AHC

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Change in number of drinks in a typical week from baseline	Sum of number of drinks consumed in a typical week	6 months

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: John A Cunningham, PhD, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health

Publications and helpful links

General Publications

• Godinho A, Schell C, Cunningham JA. How one small text change in a study document can impact recruitment rates and follow-up completions. Internet Interv. 2019 Oct 20;18:100284. doi: 10.1016/j.invent.2019.100284. eCollection 2019 Dec.
• Cunningham JA, Godinho A, Bertholet N. Outcomes of two randomized controlled trials, employing participants recruited through Mechanical Turk, of Internet interventions targeting unhealthy alcohol use. BMC Med Res Methodol. 2019 Jun 14;19(1):124. doi: 10.1186/s12874-019-0770-4.

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start: December 1, 2016
• Primary Completion (Actual): July 1, 2017
• Study Completion (Actual): July 1, 2017

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: November 27, 2016
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: November 27, 2016
• First Posted (Estimate): November 30, 2016

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): August 11, 2017
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: August 10, 2017
• Last Verified: August 1, 2017

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Additional Relevant MeSH Terms: Drinking Behavior; Alcohol Drinking
• Other Study ID Numbers: 107/2016

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: No