The sample consisted of 104 (44 female) heavy social drinkers from the first cohort of the Chicago Social Drinking Project (CSDP) at the University of Chicago. They were tested in the laboratory from March 2004 to July 2006 and took part in intensive follow ups over the ensuing two years, from June 2004 to July 2008. The original laboratory data were examined in the original development of the B-BAES (Rueger et al., 2009). In this study, the B-BAES was compared to the BAES on the predictive validity of alcohol’s stimulant and sedative effects in relation to future drinking behaviors. The main drinking outcome over the two years of follow up was frequency of binge drinking (% days in past month for each follow up assessment), with binge defined as consumption of 5 or more alcoholic drinks (4 for women; SAMHSA, 2005). The current study focused on heavy drinkers from this sample because the light drinkers primarily exhibited light drinking patterns throughout follow up with minimal variability. Further no alcohol response measure predicted light drinkers’ very infrequent binge drinking patterns over time, or any other drinking outcome, for that matter (King et al., 2011).
