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Holidays, celebrations, and commiserations: measuring drinking during feasting and fasting to improve national and individual estimates of alcohol consumption

Overview of attention for article published in BMC Medicine, May 2015
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About this Attention Score

  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (99th percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (96th percentile)

Mentioned by

news
24 news outlets
blogs
3 blogs
policy
1 policy source
twitter
53 X users
facebook
1 Facebook page

Citations

dimensions_citation
37 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
88 Mendeley
citeulike
1 CiteULike
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Title
Holidays, celebrations, and commiserations: measuring drinking during feasting and fasting to improve national and individual estimates of alcohol consumption
Published in
BMC Medicine, May 2015
DOI 10.1186/s12916-015-0337-0
Pubmed ID
Authors

Mark A Bellis, Karen Hughes, Lisa Jones, Michela Morleo, James Nicholls, Ellie McCoy, Jane Webster, Harry Sumnall

Abstract

Accurate measures of alcohol consumption are critical in assessing health harms caused by alcohol. In many countries, there are large discrepancies between survey-based measures of consumption and those based on alcohol sales. In England, surveys measuring typical alcohol consumption account for only around 60% of alcohol sold. Here, using a national survey, we measure both typical drinking and atypical/special occasion drinking (i.e., feasting and fasting) in order to develop more complete measures of alcohol consumption. A national random probability telephone survey was implemented (May 2013 to April 2014). Inclusion criteria were resident in England and aged 16 years or over. Respondents (n = 6,085) provided information on typical drinking (amounts per day, drinking frequency) and changes in consumption associated with routine atypical days (e.g., Friday nights) and special dinking periods (e.g., holidays) and events (e.g., weddings). Generalized linear modelling was used to identify additional alcohol consumption associated with atypical/special occasion drinking by age, sex, and typical drinking level. Accounting for atypical/special occasion drinking added more than 120 million UK units of alcohol/week (~12 million bottles of wine) to population alcohol consumption in England. The greatest impact was seen among 25- to 34-year-olds with the highest typical consumption, where atypical/special occasions added approximately 18 units/week (144 g) for both sexes. Those reporting the lowest typical consumption (≤1 unit/week) showed large relative increases in consumption (209.3%) with most drinking associated with special occasions. In some demographics, adjusting for special occasions resulted in overall reductions in annual consumption (e.g., females, 65 to 74 years in the highest typical drinking category). Typical drinking alone can be a poor proxy for actual alcohol consumption. Accounting for atypical/special occasion drinking fills 41.6% of the gap between surveyed consumption and national sales in England. These additional units are inevitably linked to increases in lifetime risk of alcohol-related disease and injury, particularly as special occasions often constitute heavy drinking episodes. Better population measures of celebratory, festival, and holiday drinking are required in national surveys in order to adequately measure both alcohol consumption and the health harms associated with special occasion drinking.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 53 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 88 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
United Kingdom 1 1%
United States 1 1%
Italy 1 1%
Unknown 85 97%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Researcher 20 23%
Student > Master 15 17%
Student > Bachelor 10 11%
Student > Ph. D. Student 8 9%
Student > Postgraduate 6 7%
Other 11 13%
Unknown 18 20%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Medicine and Dentistry 20 23%
Psychology 14 16%
Social Sciences 9 10%
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 5 6%
Business, Management and Accounting 4 5%
Other 18 20%
Unknown 18 20%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 245. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 16 December 2023.
All research outputs
#149,947
of 25,171,799 outputs
Outputs from BMC Medicine
#135
of 3,942 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#1,522
of 273,581 outputs
Outputs of similar age from BMC Medicine
#4
of 84 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,171,799 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 99th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 3,942 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 45.7. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 96% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 273,581 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 84 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 96% of its contemporaries.