Alcohol measurement methodology in epidemiology: recent advances and opportunities

Abstract

Aim To review and discuss measurement issues in survey assessment of alcohol consumption for epidemiological studies. Methods The following areas are considered: implications of cognitive studies of question answering such as self-referenced schemata of drinking, reference period and retrospective recall, as well as the assets and liabilities of types of current (e.g. food frequency, quantity-frequency, graduated frequencies and heavy drinking indicators) and life-time drinking measures. Finally we consider units of measurement and improving measurement by detailing the ethanol content of drinks in natural settings. Results and conclusions Cognitive studies suggest inherent limitations in the measurement enterprise, yet diary studies show promise of broadly validating methods that assess a range of drinking amounts per occasion; improvements in survey measures of drinking in the life course are indicated; attending in detail to on-and off-premise drink pour sizes and ethanol concentrations of various beverages shows promise of narrowing the coverage gap plaguing survey alcohol measurement.

Comparison of food consumption and nutrient intake assessed with three dietary assessment methods: results of the German National Nutrition Survey II

“…Furthermore, people tend to exclude high-intake occasions from consideration when they are asked to report their average alcohol consumption of a longer time span. Therefore, they rather report the lower "median" instead of the higher "mean" quantities [31,32]. Data on food consumption may be biased by the tendency of individuals to overestimate foods rated as socially desirable and to underestimate foods rated as undesirable.…”

Comparing Numbers of Drinks: College Students' Reports From Retrospective Summary, Followback, and Prospective Daily Diary Measures

“…Both types of retrospective measures-summary and followback-are criticized for being subject to recall bias, which results in reports of less alcohol use as a result of unintentional forgetting, minimizing, or intentional underreporting (Greenfi eld and Kerr, 2008). This bias is hypothesized to increase over longer reporting intervals.…”

Alcohol consumption after health deterioration in older adults: a mixed-methods study

“…Alcohol consumption was measured using quantity and frequency of drinking, which is a common approach to measuring alcohol intake in self-report surveys (35,36). Past 12-month frequency (almost every day, 5-6 days/week, 3-4 days/week, 1-2 day/week, 1-2 times/month, once every couple of months, 1-2 times/year, not at all) was measured at all three waves, as well as drinking volume (measured in alcohol units where 1 unit is equal to 8g of ethanol) on the heaviest drinking day in the past week (Waves 2 and 3) or total volume in the past week (Wave 4).…”