General and job-related alcohol use and correlates in a municipal workforce

We examined the prevalence and correlates of both general and workplace-related drinking measures using data from a telephone survey of 673 workers in a large municipal bureaucracy and tested the hypothesis that observed differences across job categories can be explained by compositional difference in terms of demographic variables known to be related to drinking behavior. Results suggest such factors account for much of the variation in general drinking measures (prior-28-day quantity, CAGE score, indicating risk for dependence), but that significant variation in a workplace-related drinking measure (times ever drank before, during, or just after work) remains even after such factors are controlled. Implications of these findings for existing theories of workplace effects on drinking are discussed, along with a consideration of appropriate levels of analysis for future studies.