TOWARDS A CONCEPT OF SENSIBLE DRINKING AND AN ILLUSTRATION OF MEASURE

The major focus of research on alcohol is not on the majority who drin k without problems, but on the small minority who have extreme problem s. Difficulty in conceiving, measuring, and analyzing non-problem drin king lies in the exclusively problem-drinking orientation of most drin king measures. Drawing on conventionally used scales (e.g. Short Michi gan Alcoholism Screening Test) and other established concepts in the a lcohol literature (e.g. craving, hangover), a set of 24 items was sele cted to classify all persons in a sample from Tecumseh, Michigan, as t o their alcohol-related behaviors (N = 1266). A Sensible-Problem Drink ing Classification (SPDC) was developed with five categories: very sen sible, sensible, borderline, problem, and impaired. A variety of known alcohol and psychosocial variables were related monotonically across these categories in expected directions. Ethanol ounces per week was o nly modestly related to SPDC groups: R(2)=0.09 for women, R(2)=0.21 fo r men. The positive relationship of problem and non-problem SPDC group s to high and low blood pressure was P = 0.07, while ethanol (oz/week) was uncorrelated to blood pressure (mm Hg) in this subsample (N = 453 ). The developed of SPDC requires additional items measuring self and group regulatory alcohol behavior. However, this initial analysis of n o-problem subgroups has direct import for public health regulation of alcohol use by providing a model of a sensible view of alcohol use.