Alcohol Treatment Research Marred by Inconsistent Application of Measures

A review of published research on brief interventions to treat alcohol use disorders makes the case for establishing a core set of outcomes for evaluating the various brief intervention options.

Published online this week in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, the review of 405 clinical trials found that the most common outcomes used were the number of drinks consumed per week and the frequency of heavy episodic drinking. However, there generally was wide variation in the types of outcomes measured and in how they were measured, researchers led by Gillian Shorter of Ulster University reported. No single outcome was present in all of the trials that were examined.

“We know systematic reviews aiming to tell us whether alcohol brief interventions work are weakened by the variability of what we measure and how we measure it. This is the first study to show how bad the problem is,” Shorter tells Addiction Professional.

In all, she says, 2,461 different outcomes were measured in 1,560 different ways in the 405 trials.

“It provides a rationale to distill this variation into a minimum data standard called a core outcome set (COS) that everyone should measure in alcohol brief intervention trials,” Shorter says of the review's results. “This COS development process is under way.”

She adds, “There is the opportunity for other outcomes preferred by individual research teams to be measured alongside the COS.”

The review, which encompassed studies conducted from 2000-2017, found that among seven outcome domains under which all of the outcomes were classified, biomarkers of alcohol use were the least frequently used in the studied trials.

The review concluded, “Compliance with reporting guidance would support data synthesis and improve trial quality. This review establishes the need for a core outcome set/minimum data standard...”