Using interactive voice response technology and timeline follow-back methodology in studying binge eating and drinking behavior: Different answers to different forms of the same question?
Section snippets
Participants
During the summer before their college entry, 1,665 first-year female college students (ages 18–19) completed a general screening instrument assessing eating behaviors and attitudes, and drinking behaviors. Study participants were selected from the pool of 1,038 (62%) of the students who gave consent for future contact. Participants were chosen based on their reported frequencies of recent binge eating and drinking, with oversampling for these behaviors of interest. Participants were selected
IVR response rate
Study participants provided 82.4% of the total possible 3,612 data points (84 days × 43 participants) of the IVR study. (Two participants who provided less than 3 weeks of data (one gave 9 reports, the other 16), despite numerous attempts to contact them and encourage their ongoing participation, were considered nonparticipants and were dropped from the study.) This response rate is respectable albeit lower than the 93% response rate reported by Searles et al. (1995) in a study of male drinkers
Discussion
The main finding of this study is that while TLFB appeared to fairly accurately measure drinking behavior, this same methodology did a poor job of representing binge eating. In assessing binge eating, TLFB data were discrepant from actual binge eating behavior as recorded by daily IVR. In assessing drinking, TLFB data mapped on well to actual drinking behavior as recorded by daily IVR.
In going beyond how well the methods chart the behaviors, to how well they identify behavior of potential
Acknowledgements
This research was supported in part by a grant from the Alcoholic Beverage Medical Research Foundation to Dean D. Krahn, and a National Science Foundation Fellowship to Anna M. Bardone. We thank the Vermont Alcohol Research Center, and in particular James C. Mundt and Dan Walter.
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