Alcohol Misuse among University Staff: A Cross-Sectional Study

OBJECTIVES: To examine the prevalence of hazardous drinking among staff in a UK university and its association with key socio-demographic features. DESIGN: A cross-sectional study. SETTING: A university in the UK. PARTICIPANTS: All employees on the university employee database were eligible to participate. Those who completed and returned the questionnaire were included in the sample. Respondents were 131 university employees. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES: An AUDIT cut-off score of ≥8 was used as a measure of hazardous drinking. AUDIT total score as well as a score of ≥1 in each of the three conceptual domains of alcohol consumption (questions 1–3), dependence symptoms (questions 4–6) and alcohol-related problems (questions 7–10) were used as indicators of levels of drinking and alcohol-related consequences. Secondary outcomes were employees' demographics. RESULTS: Over one third (35%) of respondents were classified as hazardous drinkers. Twenty three per cent reported having blackouts after drinking and 14% had injuries or had injured someone. The odds of being a hazardous drinker for an employee in central departments (Human Resources, Registry etc) is only one third of that of an employee in science and health-related departments (OR = 0.35, 95% CI = 0.14 to 0.91). The proportion of hazardous drinkers was higher in males compared to females (43% and 30% respectively), part-time compared to full-time (46% and 34% respectively), and academic compared to non-academic employees (39% and 32% respectively), although these were not statistically significant (p>0.05). Furthermore, age, religion and ethnic origin were not found to be significantly associated with hazardous drinking, although total scores were significantly lower for ethnic minorities compared to white employees (p = 0.019). CONCLUSIONS: In this study, hazardous drinking was highly prevalent among university employees. However, overt recruiting of staff to address sensitive issues such as alcohol misuse is problematic.