Drinking practices: The variation of drinking events across intersections of sex, age and household income.

Introduction: Investigations of drinking practices often rely on cross-country comparisons of population averages in beverage preferences, drinking volumes and frequencies. Here, we investigate within-culture patterns and variations in where, why and how people drink, answering the research question: how does engagement in drinking practices vary by sex, age and household income?

Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional analysis examining the societal distribution (by age, sex, household income) of 12 drinking practices: four off-trade practices (in-home consumption; e.g.

Optimizing the Measurement of Information on the Context of Alcohol Consumption Within the Drink Less App Among People Drinking at Increasing and Higher Risk Levels: Mixed-Methods Usability Study.

Background: There is a growing public health evidence base focused on understanding the links between drinking contexts and alcohol consumption. However, the potential value of developing context-based interventions to help people drinking at increasing and higher risk levels to cut down remains underexplored. Digital interventions, such as apps, offer significant potential for delivering context-based interventions as they can collect contextual information and flexibly deliver personalized interventions while addressing barriers associated with face-to-face interventions, such as time constraints.

Have declines in the prevalence of young adult drinking in English-speaking high-income countries followed declines in youth drinking? A systematic review.

Background: Alcohol use in early adulthood is a significant public health concern. The prevalence of adolescent alcohol consumption has been declining in high-income English-speaking countries since the early 2000s. This review aims to examine whether this trend continues in young adulthood.

Cutting consumption without diluting the experience: Preferences for different tactics for reducing alcohol consumption among increasing-and-higher-risk drinkers based on drinking context.

Contexts in which people drink vary. Certain drinking contexts may be more amenable to change than others and the effectiveness of alcohol reduction tactics may differ across contexts. This study aimed to explore how helpful context-specific tactics for alcohol reduction were perceived as being amongst increasing-and-higher-risk drinkers.

A latent class analysis of international change and continuity in adolescent health and wellbeing: A repeat cross-sectional study.

Background: Since the early 2000s, there have been marked trends in adolescent health and wellbeing indicators across Europe, North America and Australia. In particular, there have been substantial declines in youth drinking. We know little about how these trends are underpinned by co-occurring indicators within individuals.

Solitary drinkers in Great Britain: How do their sociodemographic characteristics, consumption patterns, and drinking occasions differ from those who drink with others?

Objective: Inequalities in alcohol-related harm may arise partly from differences in drinking practices between population groups. One under-researched practice associated with harm is consuming alcohol alone. We identify sociodemographic characteristics associated with drinking alone and the occasion-level characteristics associated with occasions when people drink alone.

How is alcohol consumption and heavy episodic drinking spread across different types of drinking occasion in Great Britain: An event-level latent class analysis.

Background: This paper aimed to (i) update a previous typology of British alcohol drinking occasions using a more recent and expanded dataset and revised modelling procedure, and (ii) estimate the average consumption level, prevalence of heavy drinking, and distribution of all alcohol consumption and heavy drinking within and across occasion types.

Methods: The paper uses a cross-sectional latent class analysis of event-level diary data that includes characteristics of 43,089 drinking occasions in 2019 reported by 17,821 adult drinkers in Great Britain. The latent class indicators are characteristics of off-trade only (e.

Geographies of alcohol and generation: Examining the decline in youth drinking in England through a spatial lens.

Introduction: While international literature addresses the links between youth culture and the decline in youth drinking, little research has engaged with scholarship on youth geographies to more fully disentangle these links. This article explores how the decline is connected to shifts in where young people access and drink alcohol.

Methods: Qualitative interviews were conducted with young people aged 12-19 (N = 96) and 29-35 (N = 17) years in England.

Change and stability in British drinking practices and culture between 2009 and 2019: A longitudinal latent class analysis of drinking occasions.

Rationale: Theories of practice can support understanding of health-related behaviours, but few studies use quantitative methods to understand time-trends in practices. This paper describes changes in the prevalence and performance of alcohol drinking practices in Great Britain between 2009 and 2019.

Methods: Latent class analyses of annual cross-sectional data collected between 2009 and 2019.

A latent class analysis of change and continuity in adolescent health and wellbeing in England during the decline in youth alcohol consumption: A repeat cross-sectional study.

In England, the proportion of 13-15 year-olds who have ever drunk alcohol fell from 71% in 1999 to 35% in 2019. Despite substantial research literature studying this decline, we know little about connections with concurrent shifts in wider aspects of health and wellbeing. This paper aims to identify how indicators of health and wellbeing cluster within 15-year-olds in England, identify changes in clustering over time, and explore associations with sex and family affluence.

Evaluating the effects of minimum unit pricing in Scotland on the prevalence of harmful drinking: a controlled interrupted time series analysis.

Objectives: In May 2018, the Scottish Government introduced a minimum unit price (MUP) for alcohol of £0.50 (1 UK unit = 8 g ethanol) to reduce alcohol consumption, particularly among people drinking at harmful levels. This study aimed to evaluate MUP's impact on the prevalence of harmful drinking among adults in Scotland.

Situated drinking: The association between eating and alcohol consumption in Great Britain.

This paper examines the co-occurrence of drinking alcohol and eating in Great Britain. Applying a practice-theoretical framework, it attends primarily to the nature and characteristics of events - to social situations. It asks whether drinking events involving food are significantly different from those without, whether differences are the same at home as on commercial public premises, and whether differences are the same for men and women.

'When I came to university, that's when the real shift came': alcohol and belonging in English higher education.

While young people's alcohol consumption has fallen sharply in the United Kingdom and other high-income countries, universities remain places where heavy drinking is routine and normative. Drawing on interviews with undergraduate students, this article explores how heavy drinking is part of how students negotiate a sense of belonging and form personal relationships. Theoretical work on belonging and relationality is used to make sense of students' encounters with alcohol.

Are changes in attitudes towards school associated with declining youth drinking? A multi-level analysis of 37 countries.

Background: Changes in adolescents' attitudes towards school are a potential explanation for recent declines in young people's alcohol consumption. However, this has not been tested using multi-national survey data, which would permit stronger causal inferences by ruling out other country-specific explanations. This study, therefore, uses an international survey of schoolchildren to examine the associations between changing attitudes towards school and adolescent alcohol consumption.

The impact of changes in COVID-19 lockdown restrictions on alcohol consumption and drinking occasion characteristics in Scotland and England in 2020: an interrupted time-series analysis.

Background And Aims: Early evidence suggests that COVID-19 lockdown restrictions affect alcohol consumption. However, existing studies lack data on how drinking practices changed as restrictions disrupted people's work, family life and socializing routines. We examined changes in consumption and drinking occasion characteristics during three periods of changing restrictions in Scotland/England.

What Proportion of On-Trade Alcohol Is Served to Those Who Are Already Potentially Intoxicated? An Analysis of Event-Level Data.

Objective: Overservice (i.e., venues serving alcohol to intoxicated drinkers) is a major contributor to alcohol-related harm.

Combinations of Drinking Occasion Characteristics Associated with Units of Alcohol Consumed among British Adults: An Event-Level Decision Tree Modeling Study.

Background: Alcohol consumption is influenced by the characteristics of drinking occasions, for example, location, timing, or the composition of the drinking group. However, the relative importance of occasion characteristics is not yet well understood. This study aims to identify which characteristics, and combinations of characteristics, are associated with units consumed within drinking occasions.

Evaluating the effects of the Licensing Act 2003 on the characteristics of drinking occasions in England and Wales: a theory of change-guided evaluation of a natural experiment.

Background And Aims: The Licensing Act 2003 deregulated trading hours in England and Wales. Previous evaluations have focused upon consumption and harm outcomes, finding mixed results. Several evaluations speculated on the reasons for their results, noting the role of changes in the characteristics of drinking occasions.

Effects on alcohol consumption of announcing and implementing revised UK low-risk drinking guidelines: findings from an interrupted time series analysis.

Background: In January 2016, the UK announced and began implementing revised guidelines for low-risk drinking of 14 units (112 g) per week for men and women. This was a reduction from the previous guidelines for men of 3-4 units (24-32 g) per day. There was no large-scale promotion of the revised guidelines beyond the initial media announcement.

Drinking contexts and their association with acute alcohol-related harm: A systematic review of event-level studies on adults' drinking occasions.

Issues: Event-level alcohol research can inform prevention efforts by determining whether drinking contexts-such as people or places-are associated with harmful outcomes. This review synthesises evidence on associations between characteristics of adults' drinking occasions and acute alcohol-related harm.

Approach: We systematically searched Ovid MEDLINE, Ovid PsycInfo and the Web of Science Social Sciences Citation Index.

Contextual characteristics of adults' drinking occasions and their association with levels of alcohol consumption and acute alcohol-related harm: a mapping review.

Background And Aims: There is a growing literature using event-level methods to estimate associations between contextual characteristics of drinking occasions, consumption levels and acute harms. This literature spans many research traditions and has not been brought together as a whole. This mapping review aimed to identify and describe the theoretical approaches to conceptualizing drinking occasions, study designs, predictors and outcome measures used in existing research with a view to identifying dominant approaches, research gaps and areas for further synthesis.

How averse are the UK general public to inequalities in health between socioeconomic groups? A systematic review.

There is growing interest in the use of "distributionally-sensitive" forms of economic evaluation that capture both the impact of an intervention upon average population health and the distribution of that health amongst the population. This review aims to inform the conduct of distributionally sensitive evaluations in the UK by answering three questions: (1) How averse are the UK public towards inequalities in lifetime health between socioeconomic groups? (2) Does this aversion differ depending upon the type of health under consideration? (3) Are the UK public as averse to inequalities in health between socioeconomic groups as they are to inequalities in health between neutrally framed groups? EMBASE, MEDLINE, EconLit, and SSCI were searched for stated preference studies relevant to these questions in October 2017. Of the 2155 potentially relevant papers identified, 15 met the predefined hierarchical eligibility criteria.

Exposure to revised drinking guidelines and 'COM-B' determinants of behaviour change: descriptive analysis of a monthly cross-sectional survey in England.

Background: January 2016 saw the publication of proposed revisions to the UK's lower risk drinking guidelines but no sustained promotional activity. This paper aims to explore the impact of publishing guidelines without sustained promotional activity on reported guideline exposure and determinants of behaviour (capability, opportunity and motivation) proposed by the COM-B model.

Methods: Data were collected by a monthly repeat cross-sectional survey of adults (18+) resident in England over 15 months between November 2015 and January 2017 from a total of 16,779 drinkers, as part of the Alcohol Toolkit Study.