The reliability of the Alcohol Timeline Followback when administered by telephone and by computer (original) (raw)
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Journal of studies on alcohol, 1998
This study was designed to compare the Timeline Follow-Back (TLFB) to daily and real-time assessments of drinking. Our purpose was to evaluate overall correspondence and day-today agreement between these two methods among both problem and moderate drinkers. Method: In Study 1, problem drinkers (n-20) reported their alcohol consumption daily during 28 days of brief treatment. In Study 2, moderate drinkers (n = 48), recruited from the community, used a palm-top computer to record their drinking for 30 days. In both studies participants completed the TLFB covering the recording period. Results: Participants in Study 1 reported fewer drinking days, fewer drinks per drinking day and fewer total drinks per day on the TLFB, and those in Study 2 reported fewer drinks per drinking day, fewer ounces per drinking day, fewer total drinks per day and fewer total ounces per day. The magnitude of the difference, however, was modest. There was considerable between-person variation in day-today correspondence of TLFB and the daily and real-time reports. Neither person characteristics (gender, education and income) nor the distributional characteristics of drinking (including average consumption, variation) predicted concordance between TLFB and real-time reports. Conclusions: The Timeline Follow-Back method captured overall levels of drinking quite well compared to a 28-day daily diary and a 30-day electronic interview. Vast individual differences in day-today correspondence suggest that the TLFB may be less useful for detecting patterns of consumption. (J. Stud. Alcohol 59: 447-454, 1998) HE ACCURACY with which people recall their alcohol consumption is critical to our understanding of the causes, correlates and consequences of alcohol use, abuse and dependence (Babor et al., 1987, 1990). Although individuals tend to underestimate their alcohol consumption, the extent of this underestimation and its potential moderators are not well understood. In this article we describe two studies designed to examine recall accuracy among moderate and heavy drinkers. One study used daily recording and the other "real time" recording using an "electronic interview." Recalled consumption was compared with these two methods using the Timeline Follow-Back procedure (Sobell et al., 1980; Sobell and Sobell, 1992). Three primary methods have been used to measure alcohol consumption in field settings: (1) quantity and frequency (Q/F) measures asking individuals to summarize or estimate their aggregate drinking over a specified period of time; (2) retrospective diaries; and (3) more recently, prospective diaries of daily drinking. In studies comparing Q/F methods to daily retrospective diaries (
Addictive Behaviors, 2008
When assessing individuals with alcohol use disorders, measurement of drinking can be a resource intensive activity, particularly because many research studies report data for intervals ranging from 6 to 12 months prior to the interview. This study examined whether data from shorter assessment intervals is sufficiently representative of longer intervals to warrant the use of shorter intervals for clinical and research purposes. Participants were 825 problem drinkers (33.1% female) who were recruited through media advertisements to participate in a community-based mail intervention in Toronto, Canada. Participants' Timeline Followback (TLFB) reports of drinking were used to investigate the representativeness of different time windows for estimating annual drinking behavior. The findings suggest that for aggregated reports of drinking and with large sample (e.g., surveys), a 1-month window can be used to estimate annual consumption. For individual cases (e.g., clinical use) and smaller samples, a 3month window is recommended. These results suggest that shorter time windows, which are more time and resource efficient, can be used with little to no loss in the accuracy of the data.
Addictive Behaviors, 2009
Objective: This paper reports on the development of a new online measure of beverage-specific past week alcohol consumption (the TOT-AL), its test-retest reliability, and comparability with the face-to-face approach of ascertaining alcohol intake. Methods: University students participating in the reliability study completed the TOT-AL twice on the same day with at least 3 h apart. Students in the comparability study attended a face-to-face interview and completed the TOT-AL on the same day, in a randomised order, at least 3 h apart. Results: There was a strong correlation between the repeated measurements of the TOT-AL (r = 0.99; 95% CI: 0.98, 0.99) and between the units calculated by the TOT-AL and the face-to face interview (r = 0.97; 95% CI: 0.95, 0.99). A high level of agreement between measurements was also observed in a Bland-Altman analysis. Conclusions: The TOT-AL is a reliable, time efficient means of ascertaining alcohol intake, equivalent to that obtained face-to-face. These findings support the use of this approach to online alcohol assessment in populations with access to the Internet.
Addictive Behaviors, 1986
The test-retest reliability of male (n = 40) and female (n = 40) college students' reports of recent drinking behavior was evaluated using a timeline (TL) procedure. The students also completed a quantity-frequency (QF) questionnaire ) often used to categorize subjects' drinking histories in alcohol research studies. The TLderived data were found to have generally high n:liability (usually ,'s ~ .87) for both males and females, with males having slightly higher reliabilities overall. Subjects were classified into drinker categories based on the QF questionnaire answers, and the resulting groups were compared using their TL-derived data on quantity, frequency, and quantity X frequency (mean number of drinks per drinking day) measures of drinking. The drinking behavior of subjects (as assessed by the TL) had great variability within the QF categories, and there was extensive overlap between subjects t;lassified by the QF method as heavy, moderate and light drinkers. Thus, QF categorization provides a relatively insensitive measure of individual differences in drinking behavior as compared to TL-derived data. The TL method also can be used to generate a variety of potentially useful dependent variables, whereas the QF method generates a single variable.
Comparisons of alcohol consumption by timeline follow back vs.smartphone-based daily interviews
Addiction Research & Theory, 2016
This study compared alcohol consumption data collected through daily interviews on a smartphone with data collected via the timeline follow back (TLFB) during a 6-week pilot study of a smartphonebased alcohol intervention system. The focus of the study was to assess for discrepancies between the two measurement methodologies on commonly utilized alcohol outcome variables. Twenty-five participants, aged between 22 and 45 years and were drinking heavily at study incipience, completed a 6-week alcohol intervention delivered by a smartphone application that monitored drinking through a daily interview. Participants also completed a TLFB of their alcohol consumption during the intervention period. Difference scores were calculated by subtracting the average weekly outcome variables derived from the smartphone daily interview from the average weekly outcome variables derived from the TLFB which yielded six discrepancy scores for each of the 25 participants and resulted in 150 observations. Hierarchical linear modeling indicated that the TLFB and smartphone daily interview methods did not produce significant discrepancies over the 6-week interval when examining percent of heavy drinking days and percent of days abstinent. However, discrepancies on drinks per drinking day increased substantially over time, suggesting that it is susceptible to recall bias when assessed by the TLFB. Results also indicated that participants under-reported their drinking on the TLFB compared to the daily smartphone-based assessment. Results indicate that outside of assessing for extreme drinking (binge or no drinking), the TLFB should be used cautiously and that smartphone apps represent a promising method for accurately assessing alcohol consumption over time.
Addictive Behaviors, 1982
Two different interview techniques, used to obtain retrospective reports of daily drinking behavior from alcohol abusers, were empirically evaluated for degree of consistency. Fifteen male alcohol abusers receiving outpatient treatment for alcohol problems participated in two different studies: an alcohol treatment outcome study conducted by the Rand Corporation, and an evaluation of the reliability and validity of a time-line follow-back interview technique. The degree of consistency of self-reports of certain demographic information as well as drinking and related behaviors occurring 30 days pretreatment was evaluated. Correlational and scatterplot analyses showed a moderate to high degree of agreement between the two data sources, lending confidence to the information obtained from each of the interview methods. Limits on the generahzability of these findings are discussed.
Addictive Behaviors, 2008
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Substance Use & Misuse, 2001
This article describes the psychometric characteristics of two major assessment instruments used in a World Health Organization (WHO) clinical trial: (a) Alcohol Timeline Followback (TLFB, which assesses daily drinking patterns), and (b) Inventory of Drinking Situations (IDS, which assesses antecedents to ''heavy'' drinking). Clients (N ¼ 308) were outpatient alcohol abusers from four countries (Australia, Canada, Mexico, and Sweden). Generally, the Alcohol TLFB and IDS were shown to be reliable and valid with outpatient alcohol abusers in four countries, and in three languages. These results suggest that the Alcohol TLFB and the IDS can be used in clinical and research settings with Swedish-, Spanish-, and English-speaking alcohol abusers.