28 December 2020
Researchers:
Dr Mark McCann1, Dr Dominika Kwasnicka2, Dr Massoud Boroujerdi1, Dr Aileen O’Gorman3, Mr Martin Anderson1, Dr Peter Craig1, Mr David Liddell4
1 - MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow
2 – SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Wroclaw, Poland; and School of Psychology, Curtin University, Perth, Australia
3 - University of the West of Scotland, Paisley
4 – Scottish Drugs Forum, Glasgow
Key findings
- This study used daily smartphone surveys, and qualitative interviews about social networks to study the individual-level factors related to alcohol behaviour change.
- The predictors of behaviour varied from person to person, the most common factors were: situational availability of alcohol, mood, and adaptive responses to control alcohol use (motivation, implementing strategies to drink less).
- There was a trend towards lower units per day after Minimum Unit Pricing (MUP) was implemented among some but not all participants.
- While some reported no change in drinking, others reported losing access to low price alcohol when MUP was implemented.
- No participants switched to using other drugs after MUP.
- The mixed methods N of 1 design provides information on the variety of person-specific factors relating to alcohol use. This approach describes the potential processes which may aggregate to produce the population level effect of MUP. Other MUP evaluation studies are currently evaluating the overall effect of MUP.
