Additionally, there were several measurement limitations. First, only the most recent NAS have included direct measures of discrimination, so we were not able to analyze discrimination for this pooled analysis. Nevertheless, our measure of racial/ethnic stigma consciousness was, in the 2010 survey, strongly correlated with Krieger et al.’s (2005) measure of perceived discrimination (r = 0.52, p < 0.001), and is in some sense superior to discrimination scales as it more accurately captures the many facets of experiencing prejudice, including expectations of stereotyping as well as anticipated discrimination. Further, the norms items focused on a few contexts where heavier drinking occurs (i.e., bars, parties). This implies the potential for significant error and biases, such as ceiling effects that could attenuate racial/ethnic differences on this variable. Relatedly, it may be that more fine-grained hypothesis tests addressing context-specific drinking norms, specific problem types, and social contexts of drinking would yield different results. Future studies are thus needed before it can be concluded that drinking norms are irrelevant to the disparities examined here.
