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Article: Tracking alcohol consumption over time.
- Article from:
- Alcohol Research & Health
- Article date:
- January 1, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 U.S. Government Printing Office. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Researchers are tracking long-term changes in alcohol consumption and related behaviors or outcomes in order to detect trends in the entire population or certain subgroups, test models of alcohol-related outcomes, and understand the consequences of interventions. Such analyses must consider the complexity of typical lifetime consumption patterns. Major approaches to measuring alcohol consumption over time include aggregate measures of consumption (e.g., sales data), cross-sectional surveys, and longitudinal or panel surveys. When analyzing the data, researchers must try to ensure the comparability of measurements over time. The stability of various measures and the ...