Gender, culture and alcohol problems: a multi-national study. An EU concerted Action. Project final report

Research objectives : The specific research objectives of the present concerted action "Gender, Culture and Alcohol Problems" have been (1) to compare within countries men's and women's drinking patterns and drinking contexts; to compare across countries men's and women's drinking patterns and contexts, and gender differences in drinking patterns and contexts; (2) to compare within countries men's and women's alcohol-related problems, to compare across countries the prevalence of men's and women's alcohol problems, and gender differences in problem prevalence; (3) to compare, within countries and across countries, the experience of violence in close relationships as related to men's and women's drinking behaviour; (4) to compare, within countries and across countries, gender differences in social inequalities in alcohol use and abuse, and to compare gender differences in the influence of combinations of social role on heavy use; (5) to analyse how societal-level factors (e.g., gender equality, drinking culture norms) predict women's and men's alcohol use and alcohol-related problems in various regions of Europe and elsewhere.
Summary of key results : Below is summary of the key results of the analyses conducted to answer the above- mentioned main research objectives of the study.
Chapters 2 and 3 related to our first research objective, that of examining the drinking patterns and drinking contexts across countries;
Chapter 4 is the product of the analyses conducted to answer our second objective of comparing the experience of alcohol-related problems across countries.
Chapter 5 deals with examinig alcohol-related violence, the subject of our third research objective, while Chapters 6 and 7 report on the findings of our fourth objective regarding social inequalities in alcohol consumption and alcohol- related problems and cultural differences in how social roles and social stratification are related to alcohol consumption. Finally,
Chapter 8 takes a comprehensive view of how societal-level factors, in particular gender equality and also modernisation, are correlated with drinking behaviour on an international level, our fifth research objective. Preceding these chapters is a detailed section (Chapter 1) which describes the data centralisation procedures and othr methodological aspects of the study including the construction of common variables used in the centralised data analyses. An additional report is included as an annex. It contains in-depth profiles of selected study countries (Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom) with regard to other descriptive alcohol-related data variable for examination. These reports were compiled as an aid to the reader to help interpret the quantitative results found in the preceding chapters and as possible launching point for more qualitative studies of gender differences in drinking behaviour in the future.