Recall of alcohol consumption during pregnancy

This is a test-retest reliability study of self-reported alcohol use during pregnancy, in which two groups of women provided two reports about their first trimester drinking over a 3-month interval (Group 1) and over a 5-month interval (Group 2). Women in Group 1 (n = 91) were queried about first trimester alcohol consumption during their fourth month of pregnancy and again during their seventh month, a 3-month recall interval. Group 2 women (n = 88) provided first trimester drinking reports during their fourth month of pregnancy and again at delivery, a 5-month recall interval. The test-retest Pearson correlation coefficient for recall of first trimester average daily volume (ADV) was .61 (p = .000) for Group 1 and .53 (p = .000) for Group 2. When the ADV scores were grouped into five ordinal categories, 51.6% of Group 1 and 56.8% of Group 2 remained in the same category at test and retest. This leads to the conclusion that self-reported alcohol consumption is moderately reliable over a 3-month and a 5-month time period.