@article{ref1,
title="Estimates of the absolute and relative strengths of diverse alcoholic drinks by young people",
journal="Substance use and misuse",
year="2016",
author="Walker, Stephanie and Higgs, Suzanne and Terry, Philip",
volume="51",
number="13",
pages="1781-1789",
abstract="BACKGROUND: Evidence suggests that college students are often unclear about how much alcohol is present in different drinks. <br><br>OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the abilities of students to estimate the alcohol contents of drinks, both in relative and absolute terms, and to examine how alcohol strength informs behavior. <br><br>METHODS: For 10 popular drinks that varied by alcohol content, beverage and volume, 209 UK university students rank-ordered the drinks according to total alcohol content and then estimated, for each drink, the number of UK &quot;units&quot; of alcohol contained and its percentage alcohol-by-volume (% ABV). Participants also reported the importance of drink strength as a factor in drink choice, and its influence in different scenarios. <br><br>RESULTS: There was low but significant concordance between participants' rank-orderings of drinks by strength, and the correlation of mean ranks with correct ranks was also significant. However, their explicit estimates of the numbers of &quot;units&quot; in the drinks, and their % ABV values, often diverged dramatically from actual values. Participants tended to overestimate the unit contents of spirit-based drinks but underestimated the unit contents of beers and wine; women were consistently less accurate than men, typically making greater underestimates for commonly-consumed drinks. Over one-third of the sample reported that strength influenced drink choice, but its importance ranked below flavor and cost; drink strength might contribute to drink choice depending on the drinking situation. <br><br>CONCLUSION/Importance: Young drinkers (women especially) have a poor awareness of the alcohol contents of different drinks, particularly wines and beers, but they make better judgments of relative strength.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1082-6084",
doi="10.1080/10826084.2016.1197937",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10826084.2016.1197937"
}