Drinking context and problematic alcohol consumption in young Swedish women

Previous research has indicated that a variety of contextual factors are involved in the development of drinking behavior. An integrated perspective can extend our understanding of the context and circumstances in which individuals drink. In this study, a person-oriented approach, cluster analysis, was used to identify drinking context clusters in a population of 20- and 25-year-old Swedish women. A further aim was to analyze how these clusters were associated with problematic alcohol consumption (high episodic drinking (HED) and alcohol use disorder (AUD)). A total of 760 respondents were interviewed, some in 1996 and some in 2001. Self-reported effects of drinking and situational factors associated with drinking alcohol were used in the cluster analysis procedure. Logistic regression models were used to analyze the associations with problematic alcohol consumption. The results revealed four distinct clusters of drinking patterns: coping drinkers, social drinkers, controlled drinkers, and moderate drinke...