Our primary variables of interest were prevalence of alcohol use and prevalence of any binge drinking episode. All outcomes were assessed over either past 30-day or past 12-month time frames, as enumerated in Table 1. For brevity, we will use the terms “past month” and “past year” hereafter to describe the time frames. Alcohol use was assessed on a past year basis, except for the BRFSS, which assessed alcohol use over the past month. We operationalized alcohol use as one or more drinking days during the specified time frame. For all surveys except for the BRFSS, alcohol use was assessed by a question about whether the participant had consumed one or more drinks over the past year. The BRFSS utilized a similar question about past-month alcohol use during the 2005–2010 period, but for other years asked about the number of drinking days in the past month without a preceding conditional branching item. For all surveys except NESARC, binge drinking episodes were initially queried as five or more drinks during one day (NHIS, NHANES, NAS) or one occasion (BRFSS, NSDUH). The
