News & Media

PhD student and SARG team member Anna Butters was awarded the prize for the best overall student poster at this year's Society for the Study of Addiction (SSA) Annual Conference which took place in Newcastle in November 2023.

Anna's poster presented some of the findings from a series of interviews she conducted with people who took part in Dry January to understand more about the way in which they negotiated challenges during the month and how these approaches developed post-January.

The interviews form part of her PhD research which aims to understand the psychological and social changes which underpin long-term reductions in alcohol consumption following participation in Dry January.

The SARG team was well-represented at the Conference with contributions on a wide range of topics including:

• PhD student Anna Butters presented her prize-winning poster "Progress not perfection: Understanding how Dry January participants negotiate the potential for 'failure'"
• Lecturer Dr Inge Kersbergen chaired a panel discussion about the Gambling White Paper
• Research Associate Dr Parvati-Perman Howe presented a poster on the "Characteristics of no- and low-alcohol consumers in Great Britain"
• PhD student Lucy Burke spoke about the mediating effect of drinking motives between socio-demographic characteristics and consumption of no- and low-alcohol
• Psychology Lecturer Dr Merve Mollaahmetoglu presented a poster on the effect of alcohol-free advertising on alcohol cravings
• Research Associate Dr Amber Copeland presented a poster on "A diffusion model decomposition of value-based decision-making in regular cannabis users and non-users"