Citation

Clapp JD, Madden DR, Mooney DD, Dahlquist KE. PLoS One 2017; 12(9): e0185238.

Affiliation

Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, United States of America.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Public Library of Science)

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0185238

PMID

28953932

Abstract

Many of the problems associated with alcohol occur after a single drinking event (e.g. drink driving, assault). These acute alcohol problems have a huge global impact and account for a large percentage of unintentional and intentional injuries in the world. Nonetheless, alcohol research and preventive interventions rarely focus on drinking at the event-level since drinking events are complex, dynamic, and methodologically challenging to observe. This exploratory study provides an example of how event-level data may be collected, analyzed, and interpreted. The drinking behavior of twenty undergraduate students enrolled at a large Midwestern public university was observed during a single bar crawl event that is organized by students annually. Alcohol use was monitored with transdermal alcohol devices coupled with ecological momentary assessments and geospatial data. "Small N, Big Data" studies have the potential to advance health behavior theory and to guide real-time interventions. However, such studies generate large amounts of within subject data that can be challenging to analyze and present. This study examined how to visually display event-level data and also explored the relationship between some basic indicators and alcohol consumption.

Language: en