A randomized controlled trial of an Internet-based intervention for alcohol abusers: Twelve-month follow-up results

Check Your Drinking screener www.checkyourdrinking.net 22 Item Survey Contains: AUDIT Drinking on each day of a typical week Greatest amount on a single occasion Experience of psychosocial consequences Demographics

CheckYourDrinking.net 2.0

Final Report

Recruitment by telephone Use RDD telephone survey to identify at-risk drinkers Identify those who are hypothetically interested in an Internet program that provides a summary of the person’s drinking and compares it to the drinking of other Canadians Home access to the Internet Ask these people if they are interested in taking part in a study to help us revise and evaluate self-help materials Send description and consent form Randomly assign to receive or not receive intervention Follow-up to assess differences at three, six and twelve months ($20 payment at each time point)

Subject recruitment RDD screening survey of 8,467 respondents Excluded: AUDIT-C < 4: 5,721 Not interested in online self-help materials: 1,936 No home internet: 100 Did not agree to view consent form: 316 Viewed consent form but did not sign and return: 209 Randomized to condition: 185 Complete 3, 6 and 12 month follow-up data available for 86% of sample

Data analysis challenges Skewed data – trimmed weekly drinking variable; combined other drinking variables into AUDIT-C scale as outcome measures Missing data – replaced missing values with respective baseline values Wide range of problem severity – split sample into AUDIT > 11 versus AUDIT 4-10

Drinks per week

AUDIT-C score

Issues running the study One-third of people assigned to experimental condition are not accessing the website Study becomes one testing the impact of providing access to the intervention

Interpretting the results Me: Impact of the CYD can still be seen at 12 months; however, it is diminished My friend and esteemed colleague, Keith: "After scaling K2 entirely whilst walking on his hands without any equipment or clothing, Dr. Cunningham commented to the world media that yes, what he had done was no doubt easier than doing the same thing on Mount Everest, a failure he knew he would brood over for the rest of his days."

Collaborators, Funding, and Conflict of Interest Keith Humphreys, Cameron Wild, Joanne Cordingley, & Trevor van Mierlo Sources of Funding: National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Conflict of Interest Dr. Cunningham has acted as a paid consultant to V-CC Inc., the owner of the Check Your Drinking software.