A Questionnaire Measure of Habitual Alcohol Use

Abstract

This paper presents a questionnaire measure of alcohol use habits designed to separately assess consumption of wine, beer, and liquor, and drinking rate. Factor analysis of the measure for 593 college students indicates that the highest loading items on the single factor extracted are those relating to drinking rate. The weekly amount of wine consumed has the lowest factor loading. A computational formula, based on factor scores, is given for the calculation of a single, over-all measure of a subject's “habitual alcohol consumption” level. Although wine consumption is the least important item in this index and may be omitted readily in using the formula for college students, it is nevertheless included in the index given in Equation 2 since it may be a more important part of alcohol use among adults. The alternative computational formula in Equation 3 is suggested for samples of college students.