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Francisco Gil-del-Real, PsyD, is a 2012 graduate of the PsyD Program in Clinical Psychology at Antioch University New England.

Dissertation Committee

  • Gargi Roysircar, Ph.D. (Committee Chair)
  • David Hamolsky, Psy.D. (Committee Member)
  • George Tremblay, Ph.D. (Committee Member)

Keywords

alcohol abuse, BASICS, college drinking, college students

Document Type

Dissertation

Publication Date

2012

Abstract

The Brief Alcohol Screening and Intervention for College Students (BASICS) program was designed at the University of Washington to provide treatment for high-risk drinkers in the college population. This program was evaluated in 2002 as a part of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA, 2002) report on college drinking. However, this evaluation was based exclusively on a narrative review of the available intervention literature. The purpose of the present study was to conduct meta-analyses on select empirical literature related to the efficacy of the BASICS program in order to serve as a complement to the already extant findings of the NIAAA (2002) review. Five experimental studies conducted on college campuses were selected that utilized a BASICS intervention group, an assessment-only control group, and similar measurement protocols. The overall sample size for the meta-analyses ranged from N =290 to N = 648. The meta-analyses were conducted with the goal of determining the combined effect size of the five studies, and to then draw conclusions about how effective the BASICS program is at treating three domains of alcohol abuse: Total intake of alcoholic beverages over time, binge drinking days over time, and alcohol related life problems over time. Combined effect sizes for all three domains were substantial: drinks per week Hedges g = -0.323 with a p-value of 0.003; binge drinking days Hedges g = -0.307 with a p-value of 0.009; and alcohol related life problems Hedge’s g = -0.203 with a p-value of 0.010. The meaningfulness of the use of meta-analyses to evaluate population outcomes, public policy concerns, as well as the need for further meta-analytic reviews on alcohol abuse are explored in the discussion.

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