Brief group-delivered motivational interviewing is equally effective as brief group-delivered cognitive-behavioral therapy at reducing alcohol use in risky college drinkers
Metadata
Show full item recordAuthor
Martín Pérez, Cristina; Perales López, José César; Maldonado López, Antonio; Vilar López, RaquelEditorial
Public Library of Science
Date
2019-12Referencia bibliográfica
Martín-Pérez C, Navas JF, Perales JC, López-Martíná, Cordovilla-Guardia S, Portillo M, et al. (2019) Brief group-delivered motivational interviewing is equally effective as brief groupdelivered cognitive-behavioral therapy at reducing alcohol use in risky college drinkers. PLoS ONE 14 (12): e0226271. [https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. pone.0226271]
Sponsorship
This work was supported by the Andalusian Council of Health [grant PI-0691-2013]. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Abstract
College students are particularly vulnerable to risky alcohol use, which increases their likelihood of developing an alcohol use disorder in the future. As such, preventing and reducing
alcohol use among college students should be a priority for health and social policies. This
work was aimed to show that brief group-delivered MI is as effective as brief-group CBT at
reducing alcohol use in college students. Eighty-nine college students (69 females; mean age
= 21.01, SD = 2.85) with risky alcohol use, as measured by the AUDIT-C, were assigned to two
groups, receiving three sessions of either brief group-delivered MI or CBT (bMI/bCBT). Alcohol
use was assessed 3 and 6 months after the interventions, and analyzed according to an Intention-to-treat design. Changes in alcohol use at both points (relative to baseline) as well as postintervention scores of intention to continue treatment and satisfaction with the psychologist
were compared across groups, using one-sided Bayesian t-tests. Alcohol use decreased in
both groups at the 3- and 6-months measurement points (relative to baseline). However, using
bCBT superiority as an alternative hypothesis and the absence of such superiority as a pointnull hypothesis, the Bayes factors supported the null at both the 3- and the 6-months follow-up
(BF01 = 7.13, and BF01 = 5.22 respectively). Furthermore, the intention to continue treatment
was substantially higher in the bMI group (BF10 = 9.77). These results are considerably robust
to changes in analyses’ priors. This study suggests that bCBT is not more effective than bMI at
reducing alcohol use in our college student group (in which females are overrepresented).
Additionally, bMI showed higher intention to continue treatment scores. The comparable results
of brief and group-delivered CBT and MI interventions in alcohol use reduction allows clinicians
to select treatments based on their own skills or preferences without any detriment to efficacy.