Reducing Risky Drinking Evaluation
Reducing Risky Drinking Evaluation
Client: Department of Human Services - Victoria
The Victorian Department of Health commissioned HOI to evaluate the Reducing Risky Drinking Project. This project comprised a series of demonstration projects aimed at adult at-risk drinkers who have never sought treatment. The objectives of the project are to: reduce risky drinking of participants; develop and trial models of engaging the target group; develop and trial models of brief interventions for the client group; and determine the benefits of each service stream for intervention with at-risk drinkers. The purpose of the evaluation was to assess whether the Project had met these objectives by comparing activities, outcomes and populations served, identify benefits and weaknesses of each service stream for delivering assessments and interventions, identifying successful and replicable strategies for reducing risky drinking; and adding to the knowledge-base about at-risk drinker behaviour and effective interventions. The evaluation comprised two major components: 1) working with the projects to develop of a common evaluation framework including data collection/evaluation tools to be used across the different settings; and 2) collating and analysing the data collected by the projects to address the research questions. Ongoing monitoring and reporting of progress among the projects was also undertaken.