Saitz 2007.

Methods	RCT.
Participants	341 US medical inpatients who were drinking risky amounts of alcohol.
Interventions	Motivational counselling (n= 172) vs usual care (n= 169).
Outcomes	Physiological primary: None. Non‐physiological primary: Drinking risky amounts, heavy drinking episodes, abstinence. Secondary: Readiness to change (Taking Steps Scale on the Stages of Change Readiness and Treatment Eagerness Scale). Data not reported. Received alcohol assistance.
Notes
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	Unclear risk	"...permuted block (size 8) randomisation procedure stratified by AUDIT score."
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	Unclear risk	Used sealed opaque envelopes. It is unclear whether the envelopes were opaque and/or sequentially numbered.
Blinding (performance bias and detection bias) Patients and providers	High risk	No blinding.
Blinding (performance bias and detection bias) Assessors	Unclear risk	It is not stated whether the assessors were blinded.
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	Low risk	At 3 months follow‐up, the attrition was 17% in the usual care group and 24% in the brief intervention group. At 12 months, the attrition was 14% in the usual care group and 18% in the brief intervention group. Flow chart with reasons for attrition reported. It appears that ITT was performed ("...analyzed all patients in the groups to which they were randomly assigned.)
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	Low risk	The published report included all expected outcomes based on the study hypotheses.
Other bias	Unclear risk	Baseline imbalances (gender, alcohol‐attributable medical diagnoses, received alcohol assistance, drug use) existed despite randomization. Biological breath tests were conducted at follow‐ups.