ABSTRACT
This chapter examines strategies, usually educational strategies, which are intended to influence the attitudes and behaviour of adults, particularly those deemed to be specially at risk. The current popularity of such educational approaches could hardly be more widespread. The extent of the ambiguity and the marginality of the positive results tended to increase, the closer the evaluation came to examining actual drinking behaviour rather than hypothetical reactions to fictional situations or reported attitudes to purportedly differentiating statements about the place of alcohol in society. Chastening though this fable is, the temptation must be avoided to reject totally the concept of a causative relationship in this area. A precise objective for an educational campaign might, therefore, quite properly be ‘to limit or eradicate drinking during pregnancy’. The characteristics of the target group towards which the education is directed have to be consistent with the aims and the instructions.
