Measuring the year consumption of alcohol: the development of a questionnaire

Most general alcohol consumption population surveys are meant to represent the year consumption, although they actually ask only for habitual drinking and/or frequencies and quantities of binge drinking in the past months. These surveys typically cover about half of the alcohol sales figures. In order to enhance sales coverage and to reduce seasonal bias, we developed a year consumption questionnaire on the basis of daily and weekly drinking adding 13 categories of less-than-weekly drinking occasions over the year. As a first test we offered the new questionnaire together with a traditional typical week questionnaire, in different modes to various groups adding up to a purposive high diversity sample of 101 drinking persons (56 women, 44 men, 16-69 years old, mean age 34 years). After correction for overlaps between weekly habits and less-than-weekly occasions, the new questionnaire produces considerably higher reports of annual consumption, compared with the typical-week-based estimates of year consumption. Limitations of the study are discussed.