Combining methods to identify new measures of women's drinking problems Part I: the ethnographic stage

In recent years, some researchers in the alcohol survey field have raised concerns about the shortcomings in severity/frequency scales for drinking and drinking problems used for both clinical and household survey purposes, especially with regard to women. This article reports on Part I of a two-part study that used ethnographic and survey methods to assess indicators of drinking problems among women across various US subcultures. Methodology for the ethnographic component consisted of three steps: analysis of findings in literature on indicators of women's drinking problems, and analysis of indicators addressed in the most commonly used standard instruments for alcohol assessment; semi-structured interviews with 12 specialists in treatment and/or research who focused on alcohol problems of women; and semi-structured interviews with 65 women from four ethnic populations who were clients in alcohol treatment centers. Analysis of these data from the ethnographic component produced a taxonomy of indicators of women' s drinking problems and fourteen novel indicators that are not included or are inadequately examined in the most commonly used alcohol assessment instruments. The novel indicators were then incorporated into a questionnaire used for a county-wide survey of men and women that assessed indicators of drinking problems. Report of findings from the survey are presented in the second paper of this series.