Journal Article Excerpt

Factors affecting agreement between alcohol abusers' and their collaterals' reports.

by Linda C. Sobell , Sangeeta Agrawal , Mark B. Sobell

When gathered under appropriate conditions, alcohol abusers' self-reports of drinking and related events are generally accurate for most research and clinical purposes (Babor et al., 1990; Brown et al., 1992; Sobell and Sobell, 1990). However, it is also known that some proportion of alcohol abusers' self-reports are inaccurate (Sobell and Sobell, 1990; Toneatto et al., 1992). For this reason, the validity of alcohol abusers' self-reports is often evaluated against alternative measures (e.g., official records, liver function tests, breath alcohol tests, collateral reports). Reports from collaterals are frequently used as a comparative measure because of the ease and low cost of obtaining them (Maisto and Connors, 1992).

A comprehensive review of the literature has concluded that, when collaterals are used to confirm alcohol abusers' self-reports, "the data consistently suggest that subjects give accurate reports about their drinking" (Maisto and Connors, 1992). When alcohol abusers' self-reports do differ from reports by their collaterals, it is usually because the alcohol abusers describe themselves more negatively (Maisto and Connors, 1992; O'Farrell and Maisto, 1987; Sobell and Sobell, 1986). Similar results have also been reported in general population surveys (Room, 1989). Thus, despite their frequent use, collaterals' reports are not "gold standards."

An assumption implicit in using collaterals to verify subjects' self-reports is that they have knowledge of the subjects' behavior. For example, in alcohol treatment outcome studies collaterals are often asked to recall th...

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