The Views of Hazardous and Harmful Drinkers of an Online Brief Alcohol Intervention and its Potential Application in the Workplace: A Qualitative Study.
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Abstract
Background: Excessive alcohol consumption poses a threat to lifelong health and wellbeing. Hazardous and harmful drinkers are unlikely to seek help for their drinking so are an important population to target to prevent alcohol dependency and health problems. Systematic reviews have tentatively concluded that online brief alcohol interventions can significantly reduce alcohol consumption. However qualitative research is needed to better understand how this population view the website in relation to their own drinking and how they feel the intervention could help them; this could inform improvements in intervention effectiveness and user engagement. Most alcohol research takes place in primary care settings; qualitative research should investigate the potential for online brief alcohol interventions as part of workplace health promotion.
Objectives: 1. To explore how hazardous/harmful drinkers conceptualise their drinking in relation to an online brief alcohol intervention and how they feel it would or would not be helpful for them. 2. To obtain the views of hazardous/harmful drinkers on implementing the intervention as part of a workplace health promotion initiative.
Method: Fourteen hazardous/harmful drinkers will be purposively sampled using the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT: a score of 8 or more indicates hazardous/harmful drinking). They will be employed in London but won’t necessarily use a computer at their workplace. Recruitment will use online advertisements, departmental emails, social media websites and posters in pubs. A questionnaire will record demographics and employment status and category. Participants will be shown Down Your Drink, an online brief alcohol intervention for hazardous/harmful drinkers, and asked to “think aloud†about the intervention for 30-90 minutes, being probed further if necessary. After the interview they will be given the website address. One month later semi-structured interviews will explore participants’ experiences since viewing the intervention and their views on implementing the intervention as part of a workplace health promotion initiative. Participants are not obligated to view the intervention in between interviews. Participants will be given a £10 Amazon voucher for each interview. Interviews will occur at UCL or the participants’ workplace. Thematic analysis will be carried out. Codes will initially be generated from the think-aloud and follow-up interviews separately. Codes from individual participants will be compared across interviews and similar participants compared. Higher order themes will then be developed central to the research objectives.
Results and Conclusions: This work is in progress and due for completion at the beginning of September. It is anticipated that this research will deliver an in depth understanding of how hazardous and harmful drinkers conceptualise their own drinking when viewing an online brief alcohol intervention, informing future research about how such websites can be effective and engaging. Investigating the challenges involved with introducing online interventions into a workplace setting is vital to understand how to engage people with these interventions, which if used could positively impact on employee health, productiveness and absences. However most participants were employed full-time in a professional occupation and are of a younger demographic; it is recognised that the findings may not generalise to people in less stable, varied occupations and older adults.
Objectives: 1. To explore how hazardous/harmful drinkers conceptualise their drinking in relation to an online brief alcohol intervention and how they feel it would or would not be helpful for them. 2. To obtain the views of hazardous/harmful drinkers on implementing the intervention as part of a workplace health promotion initiative.
Method: Fourteen hazardous/harmful drinkers will be purposively sampled using the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT: a score of 8 or more indicates hazardous/harmful drinking). They will be employed in London but won’t necessarily use a computer at their workplace. Recruitment will use online advertisements, departmental emails, social media websites and posters in pubs. A questionnaire will record demographics and employment status and category. Participants will be shown Down Your Drink, an online brief alcohol intervention for hazardous/harmful drinkers, and asked to “think aloud†about the intervention for 30-90 minutes, being probed further if necessary. After the interview they will be given the website address. One month later semi-structured interviews will explore participants’ experiences since viewing the intervention and their views on implementing the intervention as part of a workplace health promotion initiative. Participants are not obligated to view the intervention in between interviews. Participants will be given a £10 Amazon voucher for each interview. Interviews will occur at UCL or the participants’ workplace. Thematic analysis will be carried out. Codes will initially be generated from the think-aloud and follow-up interviews separately. Codes from individual participants will be compared across interviews and similar participants compared. Higher order themes will then be developed central to the research objectives.
Results and Conclusions: This work is in progress and due for completion at the beginning of September. It is anticipated that this research will deliver an in depth understanding of how hazardous and harmful drinkers conceptualise their own drinking when viewing an online brief alcohol intervention, informing future research about how such websites can be effective and engaging. Investigating the challenges involved with introducing online interventions into a workplace setting is vital to understand how to engage people with these interventions, which if used could positively impact on employee health, productiveness and absences. However most participants were employed full-time in a professional occupation and are of a younger demographic; it is recognised that the findings may not generalise to people in less stable, varied occupations and older adults.
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