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PubMed2005

Exploring drinking dynamics using interactive voice response technology.

OBJECTIVE: Neurocognitive models of alcohol use and mathematical models of drinking patterns suggest that levels of drinking on one day should affect probabilities of drinking on subsequent days. However, there has been no demonstration in the alcohol literature that these structured temporal dependencies appear in daily patterns of alcohol use. A model of daily drinking is presented that relates probabilities of drinking on any day to amounts consumed 1 day and 1 week before. It is assumed that positive and negative experiences with alcohol shape drinking levels and probabilities of subsequent drinking. The model predicts that nonmonotonic functions will relate drinking levels to subsequent drinking probabilities. Maxima of these functions represent optimal drinking levels that provide greatest positive returns from any drinking occasion for each drinker. METHOD: Interactive Voice Response technology was used to obtain annual time series of daily drinking levels from 33 drinkers sampled from public establishments in Vermont. Two predictions from the model were tested: (1) Temporal dependencies exist between the onset of drinking events over time; and (2) these dependencies are nonmonotonically related to prior drinking levels. Dynamics were separately assessed for each drinker using bootstrapped logistic regression models. RESULTS: Thirty respondents provided data suitable for analysis. Time series data from five of these respondents exhibited no temporal dynamics (17%). Data from 25 respondents exhibited either daily or weekly dynamics (83%). Data from 18 respondents exhibited the expected nonmonotonic relationship between drinking levels and subsequent drinking events (60%). CONCLUSIONS: Daily probabilities of drinking were conditional upon and nonmonotonically related to prior drinking levels among a majority of respondents. The results of the study support models of daily drinking in which positive and negative experiences with alcohol shape daily drinking patterns.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

One drink to a lifetime of drinking: temporal structures of drinking patterns.

This article presents the proceedings of a symposium at the 2001 Research Society on Alcoholism Meeting in Montreal, Canada. The cochairs were Paul J. Gruenewald and Marcia Russell. The focus of the symposium was on mathematical, methodological, and statistical approaches to the assessment of drinking patterns from short (daily and monthly) to very long periods (the life course) of time. The research presented in the symposium argues that (1) model-based approaches to analyzing drinking patterns can provide comprehensive bases for assessing drinking risks, (2) data acquisition technologies that track daily drinking over long periods of time can illuminate unique features of drinking associated with abuse and dependence, and (3) retrospective data can be used to assess life-course trajectories of drinking associated with chronic problem outcomes. Each of the presentations points toward an integrated approach to understanding acute and chronic risks related to alcohol use. The presentations were (1) Mathematical models of current drinking, by Paul J. Gruenewald and Fred Johnson; (2) Mathematical models of drinking problems, by John Light and Rob Lipton; (3) Patterns of drinking ascertained from daily data aggregated across 24 months, by John Searles; and (4) Cognitive lifetime drinking histories and natural histories of drinking, by Marcia Russell, Paul J. Gruenewald, Fred Johnson, Maurizio Trevisan, Jo Freudenheim, Paola Muti, Ann Marie Carosella, and Thomas H. Nochajski.

Alcohol Drinking↗