The current study makes an important step toward understanding the role of retrospective recall bias in characterizing risk for heavy or problem drinking associated with early onset alcohol use and suggests several possible directions for future research. First, our sample is all female and the evidence for gender differences in reliability of age at drinking onset is mixed (Johnson and Mott, 2001; Prause et al., 2007; Shillington and Clapp, 2000), so the generalizability of findings to men is not yet known. Second, we measured age at first drink at two time points. Longitudinal studies with a larger number of waves of data collection would offer the opportunity to test the relationship between consistency and drinking behaviors across larger intervals and to detect possible within-individual changes in the association over time. Third, exploration of associations between risky drinking behaviors and other retrospectively reported measures of alcohol use onset, such as age at first intoxication and age onset of regular drinking, would provide important information about the utility of alternate measures that may be affected less than age at first drink by
