Talk About Alcohol: An evaluation of the Alcohol Education Trust’s intervention in Secondary Schools

The AET commissioned the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) to conduct an independent evaluation of the impact of the interventions, by comparing the knowledge, awareness, attitudes and behaviour of students age 11-16 who use the AET resources (the ‘intervention group’) with a group of similar students who do not (a ‘comparison group’ statistically matched on the basis of observable characteristics).

The evaluation investigated change over time for the two groups by carrying out a self-report questionnaire survey of students at three time points across the school years 2011-12 and 2012-13.

UK Key findings

• Onset of drinking: there was evidence of statistically significant impact on the age at which teenagers start to drink – significantly fewer students in the intervention group than in the comparison had ever had an alcoholic drink by the time of the third survey

• Knowledge of alcohol and its effects: there was significant association between the Talk About Alcohol intervention and increased knowledge of alcohol and its effects – while knowledge scores increased for students in both groups, evidence reveals a significantly
greater increase for students in the intervention group

• Antisocial consequences of drinking: very small proportions of students in either group reported experiencing negative consequences of drinking alcohol

• Sources of information on alcohol: students receiving the Talk About Alcohol lessons were more likely than those in the comparison group to report having received helpful information about alcohol from PSHE lessons