Relating neighborhood characteristics to alcohol use risk is useful for public health program planning because it allows policymakers and programmers to understand how changing structural-level factors of the built environment may affect health risk behaviors, including alcohol use. However, methodological challenges remain when analyzing the impact of complex community factors on individual behaviors. Such factors include social stratification (i.e., the probability of living in certain neighborhoods, which is higher for certain types of persons) and social selection (i.e., the probability that drinkers are more likely to move to certain types of neighborhoods). It remains unclear whether neighborhood disadvantage causes alcohol problems, and whether frequent drinkers are in fact usually more attracted to certain neighborhoods (i.e., self-selection). These challenges limit the interpretation of research on community-level effects. Some studies have attempted to address these issues using propensity matching and time-sensitive indicators (Ahern et al. 2008). Future studies should take these challenges into consideration and address subgroup differences in alcohol use norms across race/ethnicity and gender.
