Has the increased participation in the national campaign ‘Dry January’ been associated with cutting down alcohol consumption in England
Peer reviewed scientific article
Highlights
- The proportion of people citing Detox (e.g., Dry January) throughout the year as a reason for a quit attempt increased between 2014 and 2018.
- Dry January was not linked with large population-level declines in alcohol consumption.
- People were more likely to cite Detox (e.g., Dry January) as a motive in a quit attempt in January.
Key Insights
The increased participation in Dry January between 2015 and 2018 was not linked with corresponding large changes in people consuming alcohol monthly or less frequently over the last 6 months, or in mean weekly consumption among alcohol consumers.
The data were insensitive on whether there were large corresponding changes in reported attempts to cut down consumption among high-risk alcohol consumers or reported use of a website or app to support recent attempts to lower alcohol consumption. The odds of citing Detox (e.g., Dry January) as a motive in a recent quit attempt were greater in January than other months but the difference was smaller in 2017/18 than in 2014/15, which is inconsistent with a large increase in participation.
Previous studies of Dry January and other temporary alcohol-free initiatives have indicated participation may be linked with reduced consumption. These observational studies could not establish whether people may have reduced their consumption regardless of their participation. In the current study, increased participation in Dry January was not linked with large declines in alcohol consumption detectable at the population-level. Instead, the widely reported increased participation may have resulted from a re-organisation of long-standing reduction activity in January linked to the winter months and post-Christmas period in the UK (i.e., people that participate would have attempted to cut down their alcohol use during January regardless of the campaign).
Similar to previous studies, attempts to reduce alcohol consumption were higher in January compared to other months. The increase in attempts to cut down in January across all years did not appear to be matched by a reduction in reported mean units consumed per week. This corresponds with findings from previous research, which may reflect motivation to cut down being insufficient to cause measurable changes in consumption. Participants were also more likely to report consuming alcohol monthly or less frequently in more recent years, reflecting the recent downward trend in consumption amongst some groups.
Amongst respondents who reported an attempt to lower alcohol consumption in the past 12 months, the odds of citing Detox (e.g. Dry January) as a motive was greater in January compared with other months as expected. However, the association was greater in the 2014/15 (when Dry January was said to have had lower participation) than in the most recent year when participation in Dry January was reportedly higher. This seemed to reflect the proportion of people citing Detox in the rest of the year growing more quickly (4 % in 2014/15 compared with 11 % in 2017/18) than it did in January (13 % vs 18 %). This may be a spill over effect from increased coverage of Dry January, Dryathlon and Go Sober for October leading people to ‘detox’ throughout the year.
One possible mechanism is through people being empowered to stop consuming alcohol for periods throughout the year (in line with de Visser et al.’s findings around increased alcohol refusal self-efficacy (De Visser et al., 2016)). Alternatively, it may be a more general phenomenon with detox being widely promoted by public discourse around health and wellness.
This paper explored the impact of Dry January on January alcohol consumption outcomes, but it is possible that the campaign (and other similar campaigns) may have had a broader systems effect by changing culture and affecting long-term and overall consumption, which the researchers have not been able to evaluate in this study.
Future research might explore how these initiatives have impacted alcohol reduction activities more broadly via increased acceptability of sobriety or might take a complex systems perspective to explore how the broader system in which campaigns such as Dry January take place may interact with any changes driven by such campaigns.
Abstract
Aims
Dry January is a national multimedia campaign in the UK that encourages people to go alcohol-free during the month of January. The population-level campaign makes extensive use of email and social media to support participants and has reported a substantial increase in participation since 2015.
This study aimed to assess whether the increase in participation in Dry January between 2015 and 2018 was associated with reduced alcohol consumption in England.
Design
Repeat cross-sectional design.
Setting
England, March 2014 to January 2018.
Participants
A total of 37,142 respondents to the Alcohol Toolkit Study, a monthly in-home survey of alcohol consumption among representative cross-sectional samples of people aged 16+ years in England.
Measures
Outcomes included i) percentage of adults reporting consuming alcohol monthly or less frequently in the last 6 months and ii) mean weekly alcohol consumption among alcohol users derived from the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test questions on typical frequency and quantity in the last 6 months.
Analyses
For each outcome, regression models were fitted for month: January (2015 and 2018) vs March-December (2014 and 2017) and for year: 2014/15 vs 2017/18. Interaction terms were included in the models to examine whether the difference between January and the preceding months on each outcome measure depended upon the year (2014/15 vs 2017/18). For non-significant interactions, Bayes factors were calculated to assess the relative strength of evidence for large effects compared with the null.
Results
Differences between January and other months were similar in 2014/15 and 2017/18 for adults reporting consuming alcohol monthly or less frequently and the mean consumption among alcohol users.
Conclusions
The increase in participation in Dry January between 2015 and 2018 was not linked with large corresponding changes in people consuming alcohol monthly or less frequently over the last 6 months, or in mean weekly consumption among alcohol users.