Objective: To assess the psychological condition of young adults who drank no alcohol, moderate, or excessive amounts of alcohol.
Design: Subjects from a longitudinal study of the school-to-work transition supplied information by postal questionnaire, and others matched for age were interviewed.
Participants: A sample of adults of average age 24 years. The 483 in the longitudinal study had been students at 12 metropolitan high schools in 1980, and had been followed annually from then until 1988; the 111 who were interviewed were mature-aged university students. Sex ratios and the proportion employed were similar in the two samples.
Main outcome measures: The General Health Questionnaire was used to measure psychological disturbance in both samples, and alcohol consumption was measured by self-report in terms of number of glasses of beer, wine, spirits and fortified wine taken during the preceding week.
Results: Higher levels of disturbance were shown by men who drank excessively in the first study, and who abstained from alcohol in the second study. The latter result was related to the poorer health of abstainers. Women showed no psychological differences according to level of alcohol consumption.
Conclusions: The inconsistent results for men in the two studies suggest that research methodology influences results in ways that are important for researchers in this field to take into account. The lack of disturbance in moderate drinkers of both samples indicates the social acceptability of responsible alcohol consumption in Australia, and supports efforts to educate the public and their medical advisors so that well-informed decisions can be made about alcohol use.