Funding: NIAAA P50 AA005595
The Core Component forms a backbone core activity that generates, manages and provides needed NAS datasets to 3 Center research components (4, 5 and 6) and to other independent investigators. The Center has conducted NAS surveys of the adult US population at about 5-year intervals since the 1960s, with standard measures and methods since 1979’s N6. Tasks involve geocoding the 2010 NAS (the 2000 and 2005 NAS datasets has already been geocoded) and merging the 2010 data with earlier NAS datasets from 1979, 1984, 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005. Between 2013 and 1015 the Center’s NAS Core will conduct a new National Alcohol Survey (N13) using a skilled fieldwork organization. The 2010 NAS (N12) included for the first time a dual-frame landline – cell phone sample. N13 is planned to include design refinements such as dual-frame cell phone and landline sampling, measurement improvements plus, as earlier, African American and Hispanic oversamples. Development and piloting begins in 2013, fielding in 2014, with completion by early 2015. The Core prepares datasets for investigators (working closely with Statistics and data Services Core 2 biostatisticians), NAS datasets for analysis in the Center’s research components, affiliated independent grants, and by other researchers. Results from the current Methodological Studies and items on drink size and beverage type will be used to improve alcohol intake precision, and needed psychometric analyses are undertaken. Geo-referenced contextual variables will be added from the Census Bureau and other sources. Using the proposed Methodology Component 6 Sub-Study 1 results, we will introduce new post-stratification weights to improve estimates from analyses for Landline-Only samples, including earlier ones like the 2005 N11. This US adult household series is vital for long-term monitoring of the nation’s drinking patterns and problems, and for conducting innovative new analyses to address key epidemiological hypotheses. The NAS is a major resource for public health science and to analyze policy, prevention and health care impacts.
