Norwegian Institute for alcohol and Drug Research, Øvre Slotts gt 2, Oslo, Norway.
Addiction. 2013 Sep;108(9):1612-7. doi: 10.1111/add.12220. Epub 2013 May 13.
Skog's theory of collective drinking behaviour implies that countries with a strict informal social control of drinking alcohol would not exhibit 'collective displacement' of consumption (a linear association between population mean consumption and percentile values across the full range of the distribution), as do countries with less informal social control. This paper aimed to test this hypothesis by examining the alcohol consumption distributions in African countries with a strong informal control of alcohol.
DESIGN SETTING, PARTICIPANTS AND MEASUREMENTS: Data on alcohol consumption from the World Health Organization's general population surveys in 15 African countries were aggregated and analysed with respect to skewedness and collective displacement of the distribution.
The distribution of consumption was strongly positively skewed, with 10-15% of the drinkers consuming more than twice the mean consumption. There was also clear evidence of a collective displacement of the consumption distribution, and the consumption mean was a strong predictor of the distribution percentile values across the full range of the distribution. Correspondingly, consumption mean predicted the prevalence of heavy drinkers.
The distribution patterns of alcohol consumption in African countries are consistent with those observed previously in industrialized countries. These findings seem to counter Skog's theory of collective drinking behaviour and support the universality of the observation that the prevalence of problem drinking is linked closely to mean consumption.
斯科格（Skog）的集体饮酒行为理论表明，那些对饮酒有严格非正式社会控制的国家，其消费不会出现“集体转移”（即人口平均消费水平与分布全范围各百分位值之间呈线性关联），而那些非正式社会控制较少的国家则会出现这种情况。本文旨在通过检验非洲国家饮酒的分布情况来验证这一假设，这些国家对酒精有较强的非正式控制。
设计、地点、参与者和测量：本文汇总了来自世界卫生组织在 15 个非洲国家进行的一般人群调查中的酒精消费数据，并根据偏度和分布的集体转移对其进行了分析。
消费分布呈强烈正偏态，10-15%的饮酒者的消费量是平均消费量的两倍多。此外，还明显存在消费分布的集体转移，且消费平均值是整个分布范围内各百分位值的有力预测指标。相应地，消费平均值预测了重度饮酒者的流行率。
非洲国家的酒精消费分布模式与以前在工业化国家观察到的模式一致。这些发现似乎与斯科格的集体饮酒行为理论相悖，支持了这样一种观察结果，即问题饮酒的流行率与平均消费水平密切相关。
