Purpose: The current study adapted two workplace substance abuse prevention programs and tested a conceptual model of workplace training effects on help seeking and alcohol consumption.
Design: Questionnaires were collected 1 month before, 1 month after, and 6 months within a cluster randomized field experiment.
Setting: Texas small businesses in construction, transportation, and service industries.
Subjects: A total of 1510 employees from 45 businesses were randomly assigned to receive no training or one of the interventions.
Intervention: The interventions were 4-hour on-the-job classroom trainings that encouraged healthy lifestyles and seeking professional help (e.g., from the Employee Assistance Program [EAP]). The Team Awareness Program focused on peer referral and team building. The Choices in Health Promotion Program delivered various health topics based on a needs assessment.
Measures: Questionnaires measured help-seeking attitudes and behavior, frequency of drinking alcohol, and job-related incidents.
Analysis: Mixed-model repeated-measures analyses of covariance were computed.
Results: Relative to the control group, training was associated with significantly greater reductions in drinking frequency, willingness to seek help, and seeking help from the EAP. After including help-seeking attitudes as a covariate, the correlation between training and help seeking becomes nonsignificant. Help-seeking behavior was not correlated with drinking frequency.
Conclusion: Training improved help-seeking attitudes and behaviors and decreased alcohol risks. The reductions in drinking alcohol were directly correlated with training and independent from help seeking.
Keywords: Alcohol; Drug; Employee Assistance Program; Evidence-Based; Health focus: alcohol control, social health, spiritual health, stress management; Help-Seeking; Manuscript format: research; Outcome measure: attitude, behavior, motivation; Prevention; Prevention Research; Research purpose: intervention evaluation, model/relationship testing; Setting: small business, workplace; Strategy: education, skill building/behavior change, culture change; Study design: cluster randomized trial; Target population age: adults; Target population circumstances: Texas; Workplace; Worksite.