SELF-REPORT OF DRINKING USING TOUCH-TONE TELEPHONE - EXTENDING THE LIMITS OF RELIABLE DAILY CONTACT

Objective: Retrospective self-reports of alcohol consumption are ubiqu itous in the alcohol research field. Time frames of these reports rang e from a week to a year or longer and are subject to several influence s of bias that may have important clinical, epidemiological and method ological consequences. In order to specify drinking patterns more prec isely, a study was conducted to monitor alcohol consumption on a daily basis. Method: Subjects (N = 51) responded for 112 days on an Interac tive Voice Response system by entering their data daily using the touc h-tone pad of their telephone. Each day, subjects answered 11 question s relating to drinking (including quantity) and to variables believed to affect consumption (e.g., stress level). Results: The overall respo nse rate was 93.0%. Subjects reported consuming at least one drink on 51.2% of all 5,151 reporting days (mean number of drinks reported = 4. 6). Following completion of the study, subjects were also asked to rec all consumption retrospectively using a standard quantity-frequency qu estionnaire. Conclusions: The present study demonstrated that: (1) dat a can be collected on a daily basis efficiently, and (2) traditional m ethods of data collection (e.g., quantity-frequency) result in a signi ficant underreporting bias for heavier drinkers.