Citation

Ally AK, Lovatt M, Meier PS, Brennan A, Holmes J. Addiction 2016; 111(9): 1568-1579.

Affiliation

School of Health and Related Research, University of Sheffield, 30 Regent Street, Sheffield, S1 4DA, UK.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/add.13397

PMID

27095617

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: The concept of national drinking culture is well-established in research and policy debate but rarely features in contemporary alcohol policy analysis. We aim to demonstrate the value of the alternative concept of social practices for quantitatively operationalising drinking culture. We discuss how a practice perspective addresses limitations in existing analytical approaches to health-related behaviour before demonstrating its empirical application by constructing a statistical typology of British drinking occasions.

DESIGN: Cross-sectional latent class analysis of drinking occasions derived from retrospective one-week drinking diaries obtained from quota samples of a market research panel. Occasions are periods of drinking with no more than two hours between drinks. SETTING: Great Britain, 2009-2011. CASES: 187,878 occasions nested within 60,215 nationally-representative adults (18+). MEASUREMENTS: Beverage type and quantity per occasion. Location, company and gender composition of company. Motivation and reason for occasion. Day, start-time and duration of occasion. Age, sex and social grade.

FINDINGS: Eight occasion types are derived based primarily on parsimony considerations rather than model fit statistics. These are Mixed location heavy drinking (10.4% of occasions), Heavy drinking at home with a partner (9.4%), Going out with friends (11.1%), Get together at someone's house (14.4%), Going out for a meal (8.6%), Drinking at home alone (13.6%), Light drinking at home with family (12.8%) and Light drinking at home with a partner (19.6%).

CONCLUSIONS: An empirical model of drinking culture, comprising a typology of drinking practices, reveals the dominance of moderate drinking practices in Great Britain. The model demonstrates the potential for a practice perspective to be used in evaluation of how and why drinking cultures change in response to public health interventions.

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Language: en