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The ability to capture real-time data on human behavior inexpensively, efficiently, and accurately holds promise to transform and broaden our understanding of many areas of health science. One approach to acquiring this type of real-time data is ecological momentary assessment (EMA). This method has been used to collect data in many domains of addiction research, including research on the...

The burden of alcohol use usually is expressed as a function of the contribution of alcohol use in a population to morbidity and mortality in that population (Rehm et al. 2010). It is difficult to calculate the burden of alcohol use for middle-school and high-school adolescents (see Patrick and Schulembery, p. 193 in this issue) and nearly impossible to do so for children and preadolescents. There...

Mapping a certain disease into a system of disabling attributes allows researchers to compare diseases within a common framework. To quantify the total burden of morbidity (e.g., morbidity attributable to alcohol use), so-called disability weights (DWs) must be generated. General-population surveys can be used to derive DWs from health valuation tasks. This article describes the application of...

In the United States and other countries around the world, researchers have long been interested in community-level measurement of population health in the form of community indicators. Community indicators are measures that communicate information about a given dimension of a community’s well-being (Besleme and Mullin 1997). In the United States, the current popularity of community indicators can...

In the United States, alcohol use typically begins and escalates during adolescence and young adulthood. To describe the historical and developmental trends in substance use in this age group, the Monitoring the Future (MTF) study (Johnston et al. 2012) was designed in 1975. Since then, this ongoing national-cohort sequential longitudinal study assessing the epidemiology and etiology of substance...

With growing awareness of the impact of alcohol consumption on global health (Rehm et al. 2004; World Health Organization [WHO] 2002, 2009) the demand for global information on alcohol consumption and alcohol-attributable and alcohol-related harm as well as related policy responses has increased significantly. Public health problems attributable to harmful alcohol consumption have become the focus...

Heavy drinking takes a high toll on society. Other articles in this issue summarize the disease burden and economic cost to society attributable to alcohol use, which provide a powerful incentive to develop and implement ways to reduce them. The focus of this article is on the role of selective (i.e., clinical) prevention and treatment approaches for heavy drinkers and people with alcohol use...

Even though the prevalence of alcohol use in the United States generally is lower among women compared with men (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration [SAMHSA] 2011), this gap has narrowed (Grucza et al. 2008). Furthermore, although women consume alcohol at lower levels than men, their body composition puts them at higher risk than men of developing some alcohol-related...

It has long been known that stress increases the risk of alcohol relapse (Sinha 2001). Clinical observations, surveys, and epidemiological studies document an association between self-reports of stressors and subsequent return to drinking. Studies assessing alcohol relapse after treatment completion and discharge also indicate the contribution of highly stressful events independent of alcohol use...

Exposure to varying forms of stress is an integral life experience that can provoke a variety of reactions. In research on alcohol, drug, and psychiatric disorders, the term “stress” often is understood to indicate any experience denoting adversity (Dohrenwend 2000). Stress exposures consist of external stimuli that are threatening or harmful; elicit fear, anxiety, anger, excitement, and/or...