Problem drinking before and during the COVID-19 crisis in US and UK adults: Evidence from two population-based longitudinal studies
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Abstract
Background
The impact of the COVID-19 crisis on potentially harmful alcohol consumption is unclear.
Aims
To test whether the prevalence of problem drinking has changed from before to during the COVID-19 crisis in the US and UK.
Design/Setting
We examined nationally representative longitudinal data on how problem drinking has changed from pre-pandemic levels among adults in the US (N=7,327; Understanding America Study) and UK (N=12,594; UK Household Longitudinal Study).
Methods
In the US, we examined rates of consuming alcohol ≥ 4 times in the past week at baseline (March, 2020) and across four waves of follow-up (April-May, 2020). In the UK we assessed the prevalence of consuming alcohol ≥ 4 times per week and weekly heavy episodic drinking using the AUDIT-C at baseline (2017-2019) and during the COVID-19 lockdown (April, 2020). We also tested whether there were specific groups at greater risk of increased problem drinking during the pandemic.
Results
Among US adults, there was a statistically significant increase in the percentage of participants reporting drinking alcohol ≥ 4 times a week which rose significantly from 11.7% to 17.9% (53% increase, p < .001) as the COVID-19 crisis developed in the US. Among UK adults, the percentage of participants reporting drinking ≥ 4 times a week increased significantly from 14.2% to 23% (62% increase, p < .001) and heavy episodic drinking at least weekly increased significantly from 9.7% to 16.6% (71% increase, p < .001) when compared to pre-COVID-19 lockdown levels. Trends were similar across population demographics, although those aged under 50 years and higher income groups displayed the largest increases.
Conclusions
The COVID-19 crisis has been associated with substantial increases in problematic drinking in both US and UK adults.
Article activity feed
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.06.25.20139022: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:There are a number of strengths and limitations of the present research. We were able to examine longitudinal changes in problem drinking during the COVID-19 crisis on a person-by-person basis in large nationally representative samples of both UK and US participants. In US participants, the first wave of data collection occurred in March …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.06.25.20139022: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:There are a number of strengths and limitations of the present research. We were able to examine longitudinal changes in problem drinking during the COVID-19 crisis on a person-by-person basis in large nationally representative samples of both UK and US participants. In US participants, the first wave of data collection occurred in March 2020, a period when US states had begun to introduce social lockdown orders and concerns about COVID-19 would have been growing in the US. We conducted sensitivity tests to show increases in frequent drinking were also observed when only participants who were assessed prior to the introduction of lockdown measures in March were examined. Nevertheless, it is plausible that problem drinking had already started to increase at this point, which would result in our analyses underestimating the size of increase in problem drinking associated with the COVID-19 crisis. Likewise, because social lockdown orders were staggered across US states, we cannot attribute overall changes in problem drinking solely to social lockdown orders alone. However, in our UK sample, baseline data was collected prior to the emergence of the COVID-19 crisis and then again after nationwide social lockdown orders. A limitation of the UK data we used is that baseline data was collected across 2017-2019, whereas follow up data was collected in a single month, though there do not appear to be pronounced seasonality effects on alcohol use in the UK that would explain the sharp r...
Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
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