Effects of systematically developed health warning labels for alcohol containers on drinking intentions and behaviours among Australian adult regular drinkers.

The study intervention includes five different scenarios for health warnings on alcohol containers that will be shown to study participants in a series of online questionnaires. Participants will be randomly assigned to one of five warning label conditions: two control groups that represent the usual situation (A) no warning label; and (B) alcohol industry-funded Social Aspect/Public Relation Organisation DrinkWise warning labels; or systematically developed (C) text-only warning labels; (D) text & pictogram warning labels; and (E) text & photograph warning labels. The online study will be accessed individually by participants (via a web link in an email invitation) at a time and location of their convenience. The nine-minute Time 1 questionnaire will include the warning label intervention whereby participants are exposed to images of 24 alcohol containers, through a series of eight choice tasks. For each task, participants will view three images of popular alcohol brands and asked to select the drink that is most appealing to them (or they can select 'none appeal to me'). With the exception of the 'no warning label control' condition, the three alcoholic drinks shown in each task will feature the same warning label, so that participants in the three intervention conditions will be exposed to eight warning labels over the course of the eight tasks and participants in the DrinkWise Control Condition will be exposed to each of the four DrinkWise labels twice over the course of the eight tasks. In addition, each day for eight days after initial exposure in the Time 1 questionnaire, participants will be emailed a weblink to view a single image of an alcohol container online, with the brand and warning label varying each day (per their assigned condition). After viewing the image, participants will be asked to rate how appealing they find the image (the task will take less than one minute per day); these responses (or lack thereof) will serve as the primary measure of whether or not participants were exposed to a given image. Participants will then be invited to complete the five-minute Time 2 questionnaire nine days after completion of the Time 1 questionnaire, during which they will be asked about their drinking behaviours over the past week and future drinking intentions. To encourage completion of all stages of the project, participants will receive appropriate incentives (earn points they can redeem as shopping vouchers) according to current online research rates and email reminders if they are yet to complete a stage. The image stimuli were designed professionally for the study. The content and format of the intervention warning labels has been systemically developed through past research projects, and the DrinkWise warning labels are currently available for voluntary use by beverage manufacturers. To increase the relevance of the task, participants in all five conditions will initially be asked to select their preferred alcohol type (beer, wine or spirits) and will only be shown images of their preferred product.