Substitution Activities to Reduce Adolescent Drinking in Lviv, Ukraine

Last registered on December 12, 2014

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Substitution Activities to Reduce Adolescent Drinking in Lviv, Ukraine
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0000578
Initial registration date
December 12, 2014

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
December 12, 2014, 5:58 AM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated
December 12, 2014, 6:45 AM EST

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Region

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
The University of Bristol

Other Primary Investigator(s)

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2014-12-14
End date
2015-04-30
Secondary IDs
BIT Trial Number: 2014052
Abstract
This trial aims to reduce the alcohol consumption of school students in Lviv, Ukraine. The trial design is by BIT and the project is in collaboration with the UNDP, and Samopomich. The trial will test an intervention focused around increasing the number of alternative extra-curricular activities for children as well as increasing information on them.The intervention, aimed at reducing the alcohol consumption of school students, has been designed with two specific behavioural insights in mind. The first is that the challenge of creating a successful intervention is made greater by the ‘Romeo and Juliet’ effect – the tendency, especially strong in young people, to actively react against being told what to do. The second is that talking about how bad the problem of teenage drinking may inadvertently increase the salience of drinking and lead to students thinking more of their peers drink than actually do. The intervention will therefore have two key components: 1) New activities - increasing the number of desirable alternative after-school activities for children, 2) Information on activities - increasing information on all after-school activities. The design is a cluster randomised trial with 10 schools out of 20 randomly assigned to receive the 'substitution activities' intervention.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Kettle, Stewart. 2014. "Substitution Activities to Reduce Adolescent Drinking in Lviv, Ukraine." AEA RCT Registry. December 12. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.578-3.0
Former Citation
Kettle, Stewart. 2014. "Substitution Activities to Reduce Adolescent Drinking in Lviv, Ukraine." AEA RCT Registry. December 12. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/578/history/3240
Sponsors & Partners

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
The intervention will have two key components:
1) New activities - increasing the number of desirable alternative after-school activities for children
2) Information on activities - increasing information on all after-school activities
Intervention Start Date
2015-01-05
Intervention End Date
2015-03-19

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
The primary outcome measure for the trial will be a binary outcome of whether a student has drank any alcohol over the previous month (self-reported). We will also use a number of secondary outcome measures including:
• Any alcohol consumption during past 7 days (self-reported)
• Any alcohol consumption during past 3 months (self-reported)
• Perceived level of drinking of peers (self-reported)
• Consumption at hazardous levels (more than 5 drinks on one occasion in the last 30 days)
All outcome measures are self-reported due to two main reasons; 1) the numbers involved in alcohol related crime and alcohol related hospital admissions are too low, in 2013 there were only 126 incidents of alcohol related crime and 68 hospital admissions among young people in Lviv; 2) we were informed that testing for cerebellar functions or other measures of drinking would not be possible. Also of note is that the original design was to use the WHO AUDIT survey for detection of hazardous drinking levels (used in baseline survey – see Annex B and Annex C). However baseline results showed low levels of drinking, only 39% of students had ever drank alcohol before (see Annex D for further baseline results). We therefore chose to use any drinking of any alcohol over the past 30 days as our primary measure as this was more suitable to pick up changes in lower levels of drinking.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
Cluster randomised design. 20 schools with 10 randomly allocated to receive the intervention. Outcome variables recorded at the student level (self reported). We estimate the impact of our treatment on five outcomes variables: First, whether a student has drank over the past 30 days. Second, whether a student has drank over the past 7 days. Third, whether a student has drank over the past 3 months. Fourth, perceived level of drinking of peers. Fifth, consumption at hazardous levels.
We will estimate a model of the form
:
D_i=z+ β_1 T_ji + γφ_i+ U_i

Where D_i represents each of our outcome variables. z is a binary constant. This contains omitted categories, and so in this specification can be interpreted as the average propensity to drink of students in the control group. T is our treatment variable and set to 1 for all students in schools that received the substitution activities intervention. φ is a vector of control variables comprising student characteristics. Ui is an i.i.d. error term. Standard errors will be clustered at the school level.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
20 schools chosen by UNDP form our sample. Schools were stratified based on two criteria. First schools were ranked in order of baseline levels of previous drinking. These schools were then grouped into 5 strata of 4 schools based on these rankings (i.e. taking the top four schools, then the next four, and so on). Within these strata the schools were then ranked in order of school size and then split into pairs in a similar manner. This process served to create pairs of similar schools based on these criteria, one of which would be assigned to receive the intervention and one to be a part of the control group. One school from each pair was then randomly allocated to receive treatment (based on random number generation in excel)
Randomization Unit
School
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
20 Schools
Sample size: planned number of observations
1700
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
10 schools treatment, 10 schools control
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
15% increase in self reported drinking (0.310 st dev)
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials