Our core analyses (above) describe changes in relative risks for various demographic categories, all compared to adults aged 24 to 34. In order to anchor these relative risks to absolute prevalences of binge drinking, prevalence estimates by age and gender for 1979 and 2006, the first and last survey years analyzed here, are presented in Table 4. While methodological differences prevent direct comparisons between these two surveys, it is notable that estimates for all age groups in 2006 are higher than those from 1979 among females. In males, however, increases were smaller for the older age categories (18–20, 12–23 and 24–34) and prevalence estimates were lower for the 12–14 and 15–17 year age groups in 2006 compared to 1979.
