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Brief Alcohol Interventions for Adolescents and Young Adults in Emergency Department Settings: A Descriptive Review and Meta-analysis

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Abstract

Brief interventions have shown promise for reducing alcohol use among adolescents and young adults. However, research on the efficacy of these programs has largely ignored one potentially useful approach—interventions which take place in emergency department settings. The current study combines quantitative and descriptive approaches to synthesize the available literature examining the efficacy of brief interventions for alcohol usage among adolescents and young adults in emergency department settings. One-hundred-thirty-eight effect sizes from 11 studies contributed to an overall weighted average effect size as well as effect sizes for variations related to participant demographics, study characteristics (recruitment, instrumentation, and assessment delay) and intervention details (personnel, focal modality, and intervention components). Descriptive analyses examined many of these variations in more detail. Overall, quantitative summary provided little evidence supporting the efficacy of brief interventions in emergency department settings while descriptive analyses revealed primarily a lack of consistency, especially in the definition of adolescence and operationalization of alcohol usage. In many cases, a lack of detailed enough reporting prevented the identification of patterns which might have been present. The discussion includes a call for more agreement in the field regarding operationalization of adolescence and drinking behavior.

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Notes

  1. The effect size for studies including majority male participants was marginally (p < .10) significantly different from zero but this difference did not hold up in sensitivity analysis.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Emily Tanner-Smith for generously sharing both data and expertise, as well as reviewers for comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

Funding

This work uses data collected with support from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism award number R01AA020286. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism or the National Institutes of Health.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Queens University of Charlotte, 1900 Selwyn Avenue, Charlotte, NC, 20274, USA

    Jennifer E. Samson

  2. University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, 300 Campus Drive, Bradford, PA, 16701, USA

    Rebecca Munnell McHugh

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  1. Jennifer E. Samson
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  2. Rebecca Munnell McHugh
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Contributions

JS initiated the study, created the framework for the research questions, and conducted all quantitative analyses. RM completed all descriptive analyses and developed the general conclusions described in the discussion section. Both authors contributed to drafting the manuscript, and have read and approved the final draft.

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Correspondence to Jennifer E. Samson.

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Samson, J.E., McHugh, R.M. Brief Alcohol Interventions for Adolescents and Young Adults in Emergency Department Settings: A Descriptive Review and Meta-analysis. Adolescent Res Rev 4, 313–327 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40894-018-0102-7

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