Estimation of Alcohol Consumption from the Health and Nutrition Examination Survey

Abstract

The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey of 1971–1973 (HANES) includes four general questions on alcohol intake, whereas historically surveys of drinking have employed detailed questions on the quantity and frequency of drinking wine, beer, and liquor, with and without a measure of variability (QF/QFV); methods have been developed to express both QF and QFV in terms of absolute alcohol intake per day (AA). In order to compare the HANES data on alcohol consumption with data based on these more well-established measures, it is necessary to develop a measure of AA based on the HANES questions, HANESAA, that is comparable to AA based on the QFV questions (AAQFV). In constructing HANESAA, a subset of data from a Western New York State Survey of drinking which employed the QFV questions was used to estimate the responses to the HANES questions which might have been made if these questions had been asked in the same survey. Alcohol intake calculated from this “HANES subset” of data, AAHANES, was found to correlate highly with AAQFV based on the full set of QFV questions (r =. 93). Regressions of AAQFV on AAHANES were done to develop equations, the parameters of which were then used to predict HANESAA from the HANES data set. HANES data on drinking, expressed in terms of HANESAA, are compared with data from surveys conducted by Harris in 1972–1974 using QF measures of AA.