WASP: The Development of a Computer-Based Alcohol Screening Program

(MSc Dissertation)

Franciszek Richardson

Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory,
School of Computing & Mathematics,
University of Teesside, UK

This project builds on established non-interactive psychological instruments developed by Professor Steve Baldwin (Email: s.baldwin@tees.ac.uk) for the rehabilitation of young drinking offenders (Baldwin, 1994). Through the development of a prototype system, the project investigates how computer-based applications might enhance and extend the benefits offered by the existing paper-based tools.

The basis of this project is the development of an interactive multimedia application to implement the Brief Screening Interview (BSI). The system, which is called 'WASP' (an acronym for Windows-based Alcohol Screening Program) has been implemented using Borland's DELPHI application development tool running within a Windows NT workstation environment. The current implementation of the BSI (using WASP) is only a prototype. It could easily be used as a starting point for the development of a system that would encompass the needs of an alcohol education course leader. To this end, this project researches the benefits that a computerised system could bring.