Former CYSAR Fellow Dr Timo Dietrich, CYSAR Director Professor Jason Connor, MRFF Translating Research into Practice (TRIP) Fellow Dr Matt Gullo and Griffith University colleagues led by Prof Sharyn Rundle-Thiele completed an alcohol prevention trial (Game on Know Alcohol) with 2500 Queensland secondary school students (average age 14) with funding for an ARC Linkage Project (Advancing prevention science: application of social marketing to change the drinking culture of young Australians) in partnership with research end-user Catholic Education. They observed improved alcohol knowledge and fewer intentions to consume alcohol. Components of the intervention are now available in 183 schools in Queensland. On the basis of this trial, another ARC Linkage Project grant (Changing Australian drinking: A comprehensive social marketing program) was awarded to include parents and adopt a more targeted approach to prevention using computer simulations and virtual reality, resulting in the award winning Blurred Minds intervention. Research outputs from this trial have been published in highly-ranked journals across several disciplines (alcohol and other drugs [1, 2], business [3], and social marketing [4]) as well as in fully published refereed international conference proceedings [5]. Data collected in this trial has enabled a PhD student conducting mindfulness trials in Qld Schools to validate a short form questionnaire to improve targeting of preventative school programs for Drug and Alcohol Review [6].

 

  1. Patton, K., Connor, J. P., Rundle-Thiele, S., Dietrich, T., Young, R. M., & Gullo, M. J. (2018). Measuring adolescent drinking-refusal self-efficacy: Development and validation of the Drinking Refusal Self-Efficacy Questionnaire-Shortened Adolescent version (DRSEQ-SRA). Addictive Behaviors, 81, 70-77.
  2. Dietrich, T., Rundle-Thiele, S., Schuster, L., Drennan, J., Russell-Bennett, R., Leo, C., Gullo, M. J., Connor, J. P. Differential segmentation responses to an alcohol social marketing program. Addictive Behaviors 2015; 49: 68-77.
  3. Rundle-Thiele, S., Schuster, L., Dietrich, T., Russell-Bennett, R., Drennan, J., Leo, C., Connor, J. P. Maintaining or changing a drinking behavior? GOKA's short-term outcomes. Journal of Business Research 2015; 68: 2155-63.
  4. Dietrich, T., Rundle-Thiele, S., Schuster, L., Connor, J. Co-designing social marketing programs. Journal of Social Marketing 2016; 6: 41-61.
  5. Dietrich, T., Rundle-Thiele, S., Schuster, L., Drennan, J., Russell-Bennett, R., Leo, C., Connor, J. Segmenting Australian high school students utilising a two-step cluster analysis: differential effects following the game on know alcohol program. Paper presented at: Rediscovering the Essentiality of Marketing. Cham: Springer Int Publishing Ag, 2016.
  6. Patton, K. A., Connor, J. P., Rundle-Thiele, S., Dietrich, T., Young, R. M., & Gullo, M. J. (2018). Validation of the Adolescent Drinking Expectancy Questionnaire and development of a short form. Drug and Alcohol Review, 37(3), 396-405.