What types of drinkers are there in the general population? Grouping people by their AUDIT scores

What is it about?

Previous attempts to classify alcohol use have largely focused on typologies of alcoholism or clinical dependence, leaving general population patterns of drinking and related problems poorly characterised. This study applied latent class analysis to AUDIT (Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test) data from a large stratified multi-stage random sample of 7,849 adults in Great Britain. The AUDIT covers alcohol consumption, alcohol dependence symptoms and alcohol-related harm across 10 items. Latent class analysis identifies distinct subgroups within the data based on patterns of responses, deriving empirically grounded drinking profiles rather than imposing predetermined categories. The analysis identified discrete classes of drinkers in the general population, ranging from abstainers and low-risk drinkers through to hazardous, harmful and dependent profiles, and characterised the demographic features and alcohol-related behaviours associated with each class.

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Why is it important?

Understanding the structure of alcohol use in the general population is foundational for designing appropriately targeted prevention and intervention strategies. A single intervention approach aimed at all drinkers fails to recognise the very different needs and risk levels of distinct drinking subgroups. Published in Alcohol and Alcoholism in 2008, it demonstrates that AUDIT captures meaningfully distinct population subgroups and supports a more granular approach to identifying who needs what kind of support. The methodological approach anticipates the kind of precision that the ORBITAL core outcome set programme later sought to bring to alcohol brief intervention research.