The Good Night Out Campaign: evaluation of a nightlife worker training programme to prevent sexual violence in Liverpool

In 2019, Good Night Out Campaign (GNOC) facilitators (from Liverpool Local Authority and RASA Merseyside) worked with 11 nightlife venues to engage them in the GNOC, providing guidance on preventing and responding to sexual violence, training for over 150 nightlife workers, and materials to display in venues to raise awareness of the GNOC and encourage nightlife patrons to report incidents. This report provides a summary of findings from an evaluation of the GNOC training. Findings suggest that the GNOC training programme is associated with: improvements in knowledge; improved attitudes towards sexual violence; and, greater readiness and confidence to intervene in sexual violence, amongst nightlife workers

Content, perceptions and impact of alcoholic drink promotions in nightlife venues that are targeted towards students.

Background: Binge drinking is generally considered socially acceptable for students across Western culture. Social norms within the student population have meant that excessive drinking plays a key role in socialising and reinforcing peer group identity. Research has highlighted the United Kingdom (UK) as having elevated levels of alcohol consumption especially within the student population, and the role that drink promotions have in influencing consumption practices. This paper considers promotions of alcoholic drinks in UK nightlife venues and student perceptions of these promotions. Bourdieu's concepts of social and cultural capital are applied to the findings. Method: Content analysis of social media posts by nightlife venues (n = 12), observations of nightlife venues (n = 20) and semi-structured focus groups and paired interviews with 32 undergraduate students, from one city in the North West of England. Results: Nightlife venues target promotions of alcoholic drinks at students through social media, advertisements throughout nightlife venues, and by promoters outside of venues. These promotions will often influence the course of a night out in terms of venues visited and the drinks consumed. Alcohol holds importance within mainstream student culture; it plays a key role in achieving cultural capital and is a means for students to obtain social capital through the creation of shared experiences, which are key for those who are new to university. Conclusions: Nightlife venues will target alcoholic drink promotions at students and will use the notion of creating a shared experience as part of this targeted promotion. This contributes to the overall social and cultural capital that alcohol holds within the student population. This is an important consideration for alcohol policy - it demonstrates how prevention activities need to take into consideration the importance of shared experiences for the students; alternatives to excessive alcohol consumption need to offer a similar opportunity

Evaluation of the South Wales Know The Score Intervention

Drunkenness is associated with a wide range of health and social harms, including alcohol poisoning, unintentional injury, violence, sexual assault and public disorder. Whilst the sale of alcohol to people who are drunk is illegal under UK law, public awareness of this legislation and bar server compliance with it appears to be low. In 2015, to address the sale of alcohol to drunks, the Police and Crime Commissioner for South Wales and South Wales Police developed and implemented the Know the Score #drinklessenjoymore pilot intervention. The intervention aimed to increase bar staff and public awareness of the law and promote responsible drinking behaviours in nightlife environments. This report presents an evaluation of the Know The Score intervention which was undertaken to inform the development of the intervention and provide a baseline for evaluating future work

Harms from other people's drinking: an international survey of their occurrence, impacts on feeling safe and legislation relating to their control.

OBJECTIVE: To examine factors associated with suffering harm from another person's alcohol consumption and explore how suffering such harms relate to feelings of safety in nightlife. DESIGN: Cross-sectional opportunistic survey (Global Drug Survey) using an online anonymous questionnaire in 11 languages promoted through newspapers, magazines and social media. SUBJECTS: Individuals (participating November 2014-January 2015) aged 18-34 years, reporting alcohol consumption in the past 12 months and resident in a country providing ≥250 respondents (n=21 countries; 63 725 respondents). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Harms suffered due to others' drinking in the past 12 months, feelings of safety on nights out (on the way out, in bars/pubs, in nightclubs and when travelling home) and knowledge of over-serving laws and their implementation. RESULTS: In the past 12 months, >40% of respondents suffered at least one aggressive (physical, verbal or sexual assault) harm and 59.5% any harm caused by someone drunk. Suffering each category of harm was higher in younger respondents and those with more harmful alcohol consumption patterns. Men were more likely than women to have suffered physical assault (9.2% vs 4.7; p<0.001), with women much more likely to suffer sexual assault or harassment (15.3% vs 2.5%; p<0.001). Women were more likely to feel unsafe in all nightlife settings, with 40.8% typically feeling unsafe on the way home. In all settings, feeling unsafe increased with experiencing more categories of aggressive harm by a drunk person. Only 25.7% of respondents resident in countries with restrictions on selling alcohol to drunks knew about such laws and 75.8% believed that drunks usually get served alcohol. CONCLUSIONS: Harms from others' drinking are a threat to people's health and well-being. Public health bodies must ensure that such harms are reflected in measures of the societal costs of alcohol, and must advocate for the enforcement of legislation designed to reduce such harms

Adolescents' Alcohol Use in Botellon and Attitudes towards Alcohol Use and Prevention Policies

Alcohol is a common drug misused by young people worldwide. Previous studies have found that attitudes towards heavy consumption are stronger predictors than general norms concerning alcohol. This study aims to explore adolescents’ alcohol use and drunkenness, to understand adolescents’ attitudes towards alcohol use, drunkenness and prevention approaches, and to explore associations between attitudes and personal alcohol use and demographics. Methods: Cross-sectional face-to-face survey of 410 adolescents (61.2% women) who were socializing at night in the streets of Palma (Spain). Breath Alcohol Concentration (BrAC), self-reported measures of alcohol use and social variables were assessed. Results: 70.7% of respondents had a BrAC score higher than 0. The full sample reported having a mean of 3.9 drunk episodes in the last month, and a mean of 7.34 in Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT). A total of 30.7% were under the minimum age limit for alcohol drinking in Spain and males showed higher BrAC than females. Bivariate analyses identified some differences in attitudes across participant demographics and personal alcohol use. In conclusion, we found high levels of alcohol use and drunkenness amongst adolescents, and adolescents’ attitudes towards drunkenness and prevention approaches were associated with their alcohol consumption as well as with age

Gambling with Your Health: Associations Between Gambling Problem Severity and Health Risk Behaviours, Health and Wellbeing

The current study examined the association between gambling problem severity and health risk behaviours, health and wellbeing. A cross-sectional survey (including representative population and supplementary convenience samples) was conducted with 2303 adult residents of a British Island. Gambling problem severity was assessed using the Problem Gambling Severity Index. The EQ-5D-5L, WEMWBS and AUDIT-C were used to measure general health, mental wellbeing and alcohol use, respectively. Other measures included diet, physical exercise and tobacco use. Differences between gambling severity levels for each measure were analysed using logistic regression adjusting for age, sex and income. Compared to non-problem gamblers, moderate/high severity gamblers had higher odds of a poor diet, low physical exercise and poor general health. Tobacco use was associated with both low and moderate/high severity gambling. Low severity, but not moderate/high severity gambling, was significantly associated with binge and higher risk drinking behaviours. Health risk behaviours tended to cluster, with a graded relationship between gambling problem severity and odds of reporting at least two health risk behaviours. Compared to non-problem gamblers, low severity gamblers were approximately twice as likely and moderate/high severity gamblers were three times as likely, to have low mental wellbeing. Findings suggest associations between gambling problems and a range of health risk behaviours and health issues, and crucially that such issues are not limited to gamblers with the highest severity of problems. Addressing gambling across the whole continuum of risk should be a key public health priority

New WHO Violence Prevention Information System, an interactive knowledge platform of scientific findings on violence.

Scientific information on violence can be difficult to compile and understand. It is scattered across websites, databases, technical reports and academic journals, and rarely addresses all types of violence. In response, in October 2017 WHO released the Violence Prevention Information System or Violence Info, an online interactive collection of scientific information about the prevalence, consequences, risk factors and preventability of all forms of interpersonal violence. It covers homicide, child maltreatment, youth violence, intimate partner violence, elder abuse and sexual violence

Unanswered Questions in the Electroweak Theory

This article is devoted to the status of the electroweak theory on the eve of experimentation at CERN's Large Hadron Collider. A compact summary of the logic and structure of the electroweak theory precedes an examination of what experimental tests have established so far. The outstanding unconfirmed prediction of the electroweak theory is the existence of the Higgs boson, a weakly interacting spin-zero particle that is the agent of electroweak symmetry breaking, the giver of mass to the weak gauge bosons, the quarks, and the leptons. General arguments imply that the Higgs boson or other new physics is required on the TeV energy scale. Indirect constraints from global analyses of electroweak measurements suggest that the mass of the standard-model Higgs boson is less than 200 GeV. Once its mass is assumed, the properties of the Higgs boson follow from the electroweak theory, and these inform the search for the Higgs boson. Alternative mechanisms for electroweak symmetry breaking are reviewed, and the importance of electroweak symmetry breaking is illuminated by considering a world without a specific mechanism to hide the electroweak symmetry. For all its triumphs, the electroweak theory has many shortcomings. . . .Comment: 31 pages, 20 figures; prepared for Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science (minor changes

Evaluation of the Liverpool Drink Less Enjoy More intervention

In the UK it is an offence to knowingly sell alcohol to, or purchase alcohol for, a drunk person (Regulated under Section 141 and 142 of the Licensing Act 2003). However, until recent times public awareness, bar server compliance and police enforcement of this legislation has appeared to be low. Critically, UK nightlife environments are often characterised by high levels of intoxication and alcohol-related harms. Excessive alcohol use damages the public’s health, while managing nightlife drunkenness and associated problems such as anti-social behaviour and violence places huge demands on police, local authorities and health services. To reduce such harms an extensive range of policies and interventions have been implemented at local and national levels including high profile policing, changes to licensing laws and environmental measures to improve safety. Whilst there is some evidence to indicate that these measures may contain and manage alcohol-related harms, they do little to reduce levels of intoxication or address harmful and pervasive cultures of nightlife drunkenness. A study conducted in Liverpool in 2013 found that 84% of alcohol purchase attempts by pseudo-intoxicated actors in pubs, bars and nightclubs were successful (i.e. alcohol was sold to the actor; Hughes et al., 2014). Studies conducted elsewhere have suggested that reductions in the service of alcohol to drunks, and associated harms, in nightlife settings can be achieved through the implementation of multi-component interventions that incorporate community mobilisation, enforcement of the laws around the service of alcohol to drunks and responsible bar server training. Thus to address the sale of alcohol to drunks in the city’s nightlife, local partners developed and implemented the multi-component Say No To Drunks pilot intervention. The intervention aimed to: increase awareness of legislation preventing sales of alcohol to drunks; support bar staff compliance with the law; provide a strong deterrence to selling alcohol to drunks; and promote responsible drinking amongst nightlife users. Following an evaluation of Say No To Drunks, the intervention was further refined, broadened and implemented as a second phase in 2015 – rebranded to Drink Less Enjoy More. To inform the continued development of the intervention, the Centre for Public Health at Liverpool John Moores University was commissioned to evaluate the intervention, comparing the results to previous work