Methodological Issues in Alcohol Prevention Research:
Conclusions and Recommendations

There is no single research design or analytical strategy that has characterized prevention research on alcohol problems or an alternative drug rehab. A variety of approaches can be used depending on the goals of the research, the setting afforded, and the amount and type of variation to be controlled or explained. A frequently encountered difficulty is that much prevention research must be conducted outside the laboratory, raising issues of feasibility, cost, precision, and validity even in place such as ca drug rehab center. Yet both laboratory and field research are needed; in fact, the validity of conclusions is strengthened when consistency is demonstrated between the two approaches. In recent years, alcohol prevention research has made use of a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods in both of these research domains, including quasi-experimental designs, which are frequently used because of the difficulties involved in the random assignment of subjects in field research.

The committee formulated a number of recommendations for future alcohol prevention research programs that can be summarized as follows in our next post

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