Alcohol Consumption Milestones: Comparing First- Versus Last-Reported Age of Onset

ABSTRACT

Multiple assessments of age of onset of alcohol use milestones may produce inconsistent reports, yielding potentially different results, depending on the report utilized. Using data from a prospective study of 1,023 middle school students, we modeled risk of onset of four drinking milestones as a function of multiple correlates of alcohol use and compared models using first- versus last-reported age for each milestone. While forward telescoping was evident, no significant differences were obtained for any models examined. Substantive conclusions about associations of correlates of early drinking are not greatly impacted by misreporting age of first use.

KEYWORDS:

• adolescents
• alcohol
• drinking onset
• telescoping

Funding

Funding for this study was provided by NIAAA Grant R01 AA016838 (Jackson PI) and K02 AA021761 (Jackson). NIAAA had no role in the study design, collection, analysis or interpretation of the data, writing the manuscript, or the decision to submit the paper for publication.

Note

Notes

1. We explored alternative ways of measuring the set of student-reported risk factors. In addition to using the baseline report, we also examined (a) the wave at which each milestone was first reported, (b) the average of all reports for each student, (c) the wave at which the last age for each milestone was reported, (d) the last report, and (e) the wave at which the oldest age for each milestone was reported. All results were similar and no statistically significant differences were identified.