Women and Alcohol in Gothenburg (WAG): Interviews
The study Women and Alcohol in Gothenburg (WAG) is a longitudinal study that started in 1986. WAG has data from four interview waves, 1989-1992, 1994-1998, 2000-2002, and 2013-14. The first three waves comprise data from 2421 interviews, including 1432 baseline interviews and 989 follow-up interviews. At the first data collection, 399 women participated in a personal interview, representing a response rate of 83%. The oldest women in the project were born in 1925, and the youngest in 1993. WAG is designed as a two stage study. In the first step, specific female birth cohorts included in the study population for the first time and registered in central and western districts of Gothenburg, received a 13-item alcohol problem screening questionnaire called Women Screening and Alcohol (SWAG). In the second step, women were selected for a structured interview by stratified sampling according to their scores in the SWAG questionnaire. This two-step way enables the group of women with alcohol problems to be greater than in a random sampling. Each wave of data collection consist of baseline interviews birth cohorts included for the first time, as well as follow-up interviews with earlier baseline cohorts. The structured interview questionnaire mainly comprises issues of alcohol habits and mental health, including psychiatric disorders. The questionnaire further covers topics such as women’s working life and family situation, socioeconomic background factors, legal and illegal drug use, past experience from childhood and adolescence and sexual abuse and physical violence during child- and adulthood. Psychiatric diagnoses have been established by clinician interviewers according to the International Classification of Disease (ICD), DSM-III-R and DSM-IV. In the third data collection between 2000 and 2002, the instrument called International Neuropsychiatric Interview (M.I.N.I) was included in the questionnaire and used for diagnostic purpose. Purpose: The primary aim of the project is to follow the development of drinking habits and alcohol problems, to examine the motives women have to drink alcohol, to study the negative consequences of alcohol and to study the relationship between alcohol problems, mental health disorders, anxiety and depression.
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Hensing G, Spak F, Thundal KL, Ostlund A. Decreased risk of alcohol dependence and/or misuse in women with high self-assertiveness and leadership abilities. Alcohol Alcohol. 2003 May-Jun;38(3):232-8.
Department of Public Health and Community Medicine
Public Health, Global Health and Social Medicine
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Studies in which subsets of a defined population are identified. These groups may or may not be exposed to factors hypothesized to influence the probability of the occurrence of a particular disease or other outcome. Cohorts are defined populations which, as a whole, are followed in an attempt to determine distinguishing subgroup characteristics.
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A primary, chronic disease with genetic, psychosocial, and environmental factors influencing its development and manifestations. The disease is often progressive and fatal. It is characterized by impaired control over drinking, preoccupation with the drug alcohol, use of alcohol despite adverse consequences, and distortions in thinking, most notably denial. Each of these symptoms may be continuous or periodic. (Morse & Flavin for the Joint Commission of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence and the American Society of Addiction Medicine to Study the Definition and Criteria for the Diagnosis of Alcoholism: in JAMA 1992;268:1012-4)
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