Perhaps the main lesson to be drawn is that it is essential to consider more than one survey data source whenever possible when drawing conclusions about trends in alcohol use and other health behaviors and to look for areas of concordance across surveys. This is straightforward for alcohol use and smoking, measures of which are contained in all six of the surveys described here. Because most of these data sources are publicly available, the meta-analytic approach described here is accessible to all investigators. However, measures of adult illicit drug use are more limited; this is assessed annually by the NSDUH and periodically by the NAS (since 1984) and the NESARC and its predecessor, the National Longitudinal Alcohol Epidemiologic Survey (NLAES), administered in 1991/1992.
