Secondly, the assessment of symptoms of AAD consisted of a four-item self-report questionnaire. The CAGE has been successfully used as a screening instrument for AAD (Dhalla and Kopec 2007; Maisto and Saitz 2003; Aertgeerts et al. 2004) and socially undesirable behaviors such as symptoms of AAD may be better assessed using self-administration methods than interviews (Tipping et al. 2010; Bowling 2005). Lastly, the CAGE inquires about ‘ever’ having symptoms of AAD (Ewing 1984). This would imply that participants cannot answer an item with ‘no’ when they have answered ‘yes’ to that item at an earlier assessment. In total, 8,398 subjects took part in the study and for 3,909 there were at least two observations. In this last group, 5.8% of the replies was inconsistent (determined as the number of inconsistent answers as a function of the total number of replies). That is, a no-reply followed an earlier yes-reply. Giving an inconsistent response was relatively more frequent among males (χ2(1) = 35.30, p < .001), who on average endorse symptoms of AAD more often than women and therefore have a higher chance of giving an inconsistent response, and individuals who entered the study at a younger age (χ2(5) = 133.06, p
