Alcohol consumption was treated as a continuous variable in some analyses (number of drinks per day, calculated from participant responses), while other analyses were conducted with dichotomous cut points: heavy drinkers were defined as averaging more than 1 (women) or 2 (men) drinks per day; moderate drinkers were those consuming alcohol below cut-offs for heavy drinkers; and abstainers were defined as reporting no alcohol consumption. The self-reported number of days drinking within the past week was not used as a measure in and of itself, but rather was used to calculate average number of drinks in a day. It is important to note that these labels do not reflect clinical definitions of alcohol abuse or dependence. Table 2 shows averages for the study population across time, including average age as well as population averages for alcohol consumption and percentages of abstainers and drinkers. While it is difficult to compare our results to other population samples in terms of heavy drinking due to the difference in how we measure it, the other averages for the mean-age groups in each year of the given waves are roughly similar to national averages of alcohol consumption behavior (1, 19, 20).
