CAMPAIGNS to get young people to drink less should focus on the benefits of not drinking and how it can be achieved, a new study suggests.

Pointing out the advantages and achievability of staying sober is more effective than traditional approaches that warn of the risks of heavy drinking, according to the research carried out at the University of Sussex.

Researcher Dominic Conroy found university students were more likely to reduce their overall drinking levels if they focused on the benefits of abstaining, such as more money and better health.

They were also less likely to binge drink if they had worked out ways to avoid alcohol, such being direct but polite when declining a drink or choosing to spend time with supportive friends.

Typical promotions around healthy drinking focus on the risks of high alcohol consumption and encourage people to monitor their drinking behaviour.

However, the study found that completing a drinks diary was less effective in encouraging safer drinking than completing an exercise relating to non-drinking.

Dr Conroy said: “We focused on students because, in the UK, they remain a group who drink heavily relative to their non-student peers of the same age.

“Recent campaigns, such as the NHS Change4Life initiative, give good online guidance as to how many units you should be drinking and how many units are in specific drinks.

“Our research contributes to existing health promotion advice, which seeks to encourage young people to consider taking ‘dry days yet does not always indicate the range of benefits nor suggest how non-drinking can be more successfully managed.”

Dr Conroy studied 211 English university students aged 18 to 25 over the course of a month.

He found students who imagined positive outcomes of non-drinking reduced their weekly alcohol consumption from 20 units to 14 units on average.

Similarly, students who imagined required strategies for non-drinking reduced the frequency of binge drinking episodes.

Perceptions of non-drinkers also changed among students after taking part in the study.

Dr Conroy said: “Studies have suggested that holding negative views of non-drinkers may be closely linked to personal drinking behaviour and we were interested to see in the current study that these views may have improved as a result of taking part in a non-drinking exercise.”