Hi Dominic - good question - but I am not putting forward any literature suggestions; rather an observation that makes it difficult to answer the question. The 'safety' messages, to date, - as I am sure you are aware - are often mixed, varied, contradictory and not always that well evaluated. National recommendations and programmes vary internationally - whereby an international consensus would be highly desirable. Consumers are at the 'thin end of the wedge' - they are told 'this is acceptable or not' - based on what often seems highly 'generalised' criteria i.e. 'what is safe and to whom', 'who is at risk', 'what are the risks', 'are some individuals more at risk than others' etc. Added to that is that all these questions are often asked against and contrasted against the context of different parameters i.e age, gender, culture, genetics etc. I might be stating the obvious here - but I can't think of any 'specific' literature/research that can accommodate all these things - other than a long list of examples.

Hi Dean,

Many thanks for this useful and considered answer. I see that my question inevitably involves the various issues which you describe.

I’m really looking for literature which raises some debate over this dominant health promotion approach in the alcohol field.

Drinking guidelines differ (within and between countries), as does criteria for who should be perceived as most at risk. Putting this enormous variability in criteria and definitions to one side, I’m trying to find studies/any evidence which challenges the broad assumption common to them all; that imparting sensible drinking guidelines consists the health promotion approach which policy makers and practitioners should throw the vast proportion of their time and resources behind?

It’s not so much literature relating to the considerable variability of drinking guidelines and criteria for harmful drinking that I’m interested in, but rather papers which evaluate or challenge the assumption that underpins them all (that understanding of ‘safe recommended consumption levels’ = healthier population drinking). This literature may not exist!

Thank you again for response,

Dom

Hi Dominic - well elaborated. There is a link here to a particular resource that fits some of your criteria. Just click on the pdf. However, it is aimed at young people - and that may not fit your bill - but I think that the policy debate is quite generic in it. I hope that it helps for now.

http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09687630802511456

Hi Dominic - I like this, very nuggetty, gets at the core. Whole issue around 'one size fits all'. In the US (initially, I think) and more recently in Europe, popular attitudes to specific behaviours, incl. alcohol consumption, have been challenged via research into social norms. I.e. different to the punitive (quasi-risk) agenda which underpins much traditional health promotion ideology, normative approaches (at best) view individuals within their specific (peer-normed) context in order to expose some of the assumptions about the how much and/or how often people are, say, drinking alcohol.

@Dean - many thanks this is a useful reference to one of Christopher Hackley's papers. Yes, my research looks at health behaviour among 18-25 year olds so that's perfect, thank you.

@Carl - thanks for response. I see what you are saying; that the social norms approach implicitly challenges risk perception health promotion agendas in the context of alcohol consumption. I wondered if you had particular papers in mind which discuss the limitations of more conventional risked-based health promotion approaches? Perhaps this more general literature (i.e. not specific to alcohol) would be the closest approximation to what I am looking for. Thanks again.

No problem Dominic - I'm attaching a more generic article of mine which, when I published it back in 2004. I thought that it might cause a bit of controversy. It didn't - so I assume people are accepting of its principles - and it's been cited a fair bit. It's about pleasure principles, youth and their 'normative' health journey - applied to reactance etc. It mainly uses sexual and drugs-related behaviour to highlight - but the principles can be applied to any 'risk-related' issue in youth. If you want to take a peek Carl - it's also a warning about not adhering to the traditional health promotion practices that I find often blights the discipline.

Happy reading!!

Great many thanks, looks interesting.

Hi Dominic,

As you say there isn't currently much empirical research in this area, however I supervise a PhD student whose work should start to address this gap when it come out, next year I would guess. In the meantime you might want to look at the papers which I have attached. They formed some of the groundwork for Richard's PhD and like Dean seem to have been accepted rather than courting controversy. I am also enclosing details of a conference being held here in Cardiff in on the 12th and 13th December because if you are looking at drinking behaviours you might find joining the BSA Alcohol Study group useful. There is also a study group based at Warwick University. looking at similar themes

Finally you might want to look at the papers on the Alcohol Research UK website and particularly the work of James Nichols, ex of Bath and now working for Alcohol Research UK. He did some good work on the impact of marketing on young adult consumers.

No sure how you add several attachment so I am doing this one at a time. Sorry to be so long winded

And finally

Hi Caroline,

Many thanks for these really excellent suggested avenues of pursuit. Particularly glad to now learn of some of both yours and James Nicholls' papers. Similarly to Dean's, would provide a valuable 'way in' to my specific research focus and some breadth to the inter-disciplinary composition of the introductory literature chapter in my thesis.

The conference next month looks extremely interesting and many thanks for details. Sadly I can't make it this year, but would be great to submit an abstract for 2014, so I shall be on the look out for submission deadlines.

Look forward to following your work now on RG.

Thanks again,

Dom

Regarding: conventional ‘safe consumption level’ alcohol-related health promotion messages...My research is a text based intervention to reduce alcohol related harms. I comment here because the content & timing of the personal text messages in my research is controlled by each participant. This approach challenges the efficacy of "standard" health promotion messages - as I found out when I saw the messages participants had created for themselves.

Studies have shown that non-dependent drinking is associated with altered cerebral activation during cognitive challenges. See, for instance:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23461484

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22339607

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19579091

Many thanks for recent responses.

@Karen Renner: I completely agree that customized /participant-generated personal messages much more interesting route forward for health promotion messages in the alcohol field, and will follow your research in this area with interest many thanks.

@Chaing-Shan Li: Thanks for links to some interesting sounding research. Looking at neuro-cognitive features of individuals who do not fall into 'alcohol dependency' categories seems important. It is interesting to think about the implications of these study findings for health promotion message content aimed at the general population.