The Epidemiology of Alcoholism in an Urban Residential Area

Abstract

Increasing acceptance of alcoholism as a public health problem suggests the need for studying its prevalence and its distribution in the population to identify vulnerable subgroups. Such an epidemiologic survey of alcoholism was undertaken by the National Council on Alcoholism (NCA) in conjunction with the Washington Heights Master Sample Survey of 1960-1961. The community survey phase of the research program of the National Council on Alcoholism had both immediate and future-oriented objectives: (1) to attempt to identify alcoholics through brief questioning as part of a multipurpose health survey; (2) to compare the characteristics of persons so identified with the population as a whole; and (3) to obtain a community sample of alcoholics for later study of family interaction, using matched groups of nonalcoholics from the Washington Heights Survey as controls.