Saitz 2007.

Methods	RCT
Participants	Country of origin: USA; N=341; Age: 18 years and over; Sex: mixed Clinical setting: medical inpatient unit Inclusion criteria: Score 8 or more on AUDIT, men included if drank >14 drinks per week or 5 or more drinks per occasion. Women included if >11 drinks per week or 4 or more drinks per occasion. Also had 2 contacts for independent verification and scored >21 on MMSE Exclusion criteria: not fluent in English or Spanish, scored <21 in mental state examination
Interventions	Brief intervention delivered by: trained counsellors and PhD clinical psychology students Brief Intervention group: 30 min of motivational counselling (N=172) Control group: Usual care/screening patients told results of this (N=169)
Outcomes	Followed up at 3 months and 12 months 1) self reported receipt of alcohol assistance in past 3 months by patients with alcohol dependence 2) change from baseline in number of mean drinks per day from enrolment to 12 months 3) changes in number of heavy drinking episodes from enrolment to 12 months 4) readiness to change 5) alcohol problems as measured by short inventory of alcohol problems
Notes	3/4 of participants met criteria for alcohol dependence and 1/4 were harmful/hazardous drinkers.
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	Unclear risk	Unclear how sequence generation was made
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	Low risk	Investigators enrolling participants could not foresee assignment because central allocation via an off site data management group was used
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	Low risk	Losses to follow up: 14/169 control group and 23/172 brief intervention group. Intention to treat analysis undertaken.
Other bias	Unclear risk	3/4 of participants met criteria for alcohol dependence and 1/4 were harmful/hazardous drinkers. No other additional sources of bias identified
Blinding of assessors?	Low risk	Stated