Identifying the Population Sources of Alcohol Impaired Driving: An Assessment of Context Specific Drinking Risks.

Objective: High-risk drinkers who drink in high-risk contexts like bars are recognized as a primary source of alcohol-impaired drivers and motor vehicle crashes within communities. We assess the contributions of drinking in other contexts to these outcomes.

Method: Self-report survey data from 8,553 adults in 50 California cities were used to estimate rates of driving after drinking (DAD; driving within 4 hours of drinking any alcohol) and a measure of alcohol-impaired driving (AID; driving when having had "too much" to safely drive home) associated with drinking in bars, homes, restaurants, parties, and other contexts.

Testing a social ecological model of alcohol use: the California 50-city study.

Background And Aims: Social ecological theories suggest that greater community alcohol availability and individual drinker characteristics should jointly affect drinking patterns and the use of drinking contexts. We assessed relationships of demographic and personality characteristics of individual drinkers and environmental characteristics at the city-level to measures of drinking patterns and use of drinking contexts.

Design: Multi-level statistical analyses of archival and survey data from 50 cities in California, USA.

Assessing correlates of the growth and extent of methamphetamine abuse and dependence in California.

Using aggregate-level data, this study performed cross-sectional analyses on all 1,628 populated California zip code areas and longitudinal analyses on 581 consistently defined zip codes over six years (1995-2000), relating place and population characteristics of these areas to rates of hospital discharges for amphetamine dependence/abuse using linear spatial models. Analyzing the data in two ways, spatial time series cross-sections and spatial difference models, amphetamine dependence/abuse were greatest in rural areas with more young low-income whites, larger numbers of retail and alcohol outlets, and smaller numbers of restaurants. Growth rates of these problems were greater in areas with higher income and larger non-White and Hispanic populations.

A dose-response perspective on college drinking and related problems.

Aims: In order to examine the degree to which heavy drinking contributes to risks for problems among college drinkers this paper develops and tests a dose-response model of alcohol use that relates frequencies of drinking specific quantities of alcohol to the incidence of drinking problems.

Methods: A mathematical model was developed that enabled estimation of dose-response relationships between drinking quantities and drinking problems using self-report data from 8698 college drinkers across 14 campuses in California, USA. The model assumes that drinking risks are a direct monotone function of the amount consumed per day and additive across drinking days.

Ecological associations of alcohol outlets with underage and young adult injuries.

Objective: This paper argues that associations between rates of 3 specific problems related to alcohol (i.e., accidents, traffic crashes, and assaults) should be differentially related to densities of alcohol outlets among underage youth and young adults based upon age-related patterns of alcohol outlet use.

An ecological assessment of the population and environmental correlates of childhood accident, assault, and child abuse injuries.

Background: This study examines the relationships of population and environmental characteristics to hospital discharges for childhood accident, assault, and child abuse injuries among youth from 0 to 17 years of age.

Methods: The analysis uses aggregate data on populations and environments in 1,646 California zip code areas that were collected for the year 2000. Zero inflated negative binomial models were used to assess ecological relationships between these characteristics and numbers of hospital discharges for childhood injuries from accidents and assaults; negative binomial models were used to assess these relationships for injuries related to child abuse.

Examining multi-level relationships between bars, hostility and aggression: social selection and social influence.

Aims: This paper considers statistical relationships often observed between densities of bars and pubs and rates of violence as suggested by two general approaches: (i) social influence and (ii) social selection.

Methods: A stratified sample of 36 zip code areas in California was identified as having 'high', 'medium' and 'low' densities of bars and pubs. Aggregate US Census 2000 data were used to characterize population demographics of each zip code area.

Joint impacts of minimum legal drinking age and beer taxes on US youth traffic fatalities, 1975 to 2001.

Background: There is a considerable body of prior research indicating that a number of public policies that limit alcohol availability affect youth traffic fatalities. These limitations can be economic (e.g.

Understanding the ecology of child maltreatment: a review of the literature and directions for future research.

Studies examining neighborhood characteristics in relation to social problems, including child maltreatment, have proliferated in the past 25 years. This article reviews the current state of knowledge of ecological studies of child maltreatment. Taken as a whole, these 18 studies document a stable ecological relationship among neighborhood impoverishment, housing stress, and rates of child maltreatment, as well as some evidence that unemployment, child care burden, and alcohol availability may contribute to child abuse and neglect.

Ecological models of alcohol outlets and violent assaults: crime potentials and geospatial analysis.

Aims: Empirical tests of relationships between alcohol outlets and violence are generally conducted with statistical controls for correlates related to characteristics of people and the places in which they live. Crime potentials theory asserts that certain subpopulations are disposed to participate in criminal activities (population potentials) and certain neighborhoods are more likely to be places where crimes occur (place potentials). The current study assesses the degree to which measures of the different geographic distributions of these potentials contribute to violent crime.

An exploratory study examining the spatial dynamics of illicit drug availability and rates of drug use.

This study examines the spatial relationship between drug availability and rates of drug use in neighborhood areas. Responses from 16,083 individuals were analyzed at the zip code level (n = 158) and analyses were conducted separately for youth and adults using spatial regression techniques. The dependent variable is the percentage of respondents using drugs in the past year.

An examination of drug activity: effects of neighborhood social organization on the development of drug distribution systems.

Objective: The ability to determine the geographic locations of illicit drug markets is central to the development of preventive interventions that address access to drugs and associated problems, such as violence and crime.

Method: The current study examined individual self-reports of drug activities and demographic information obtained from two waves of a telephone survey of 1704 individuals aged 15 to 29 conducted in 1999 and 2001 across 95 census tracts in a Northern California city and measures of neighborhood characteristics derived from Census 2000 measures.

Results: The results of the study showed that, at the individual level, younger people and male respondents reported most drug activities.

An ecological study of the locations of schools and child pedestrian injury collisions.

Geographic studies of the incidence and prevalence of child pedestrian injury collisions in different community environments have been primarily descriptive and idiosyncratic, reflecting one or another likely determinant of the places where these injuries occur. The current study maintains that multiple determinants of child pedestrian injury collisions must be considered in evaluating the unique contributions of any one community feature to injury rates. These features include local characteristics of populations, such as rates of unemployment, and places, such as locations of schools.