This study provides a method for developing and testing the reliability of estimates of population measures for alcohol-related crime.
Aims: Alcohol misuse causes substantial public health harm. Strategies have been proposed to reduce alcohol-related harm at the community-level, which requires suitable community-level measures to monitor changes over time and between communities. For alcohol-related crime, certain offences occurring at certain times that often involve alcohol have been used as a proxy measure. There is currently no adequate empirical rationale for identifying the most reliable proxy measure of alcohol-related crime. This report examines the suitability of three measures of alcohol-related crime.
Methods: Police records of reported incidents from twenty communities in NSW, Australia, that were involved in a community-wide randomised controlled trial to reduce alcohol-related harm were examined. Three measures were derived; i) serious assaults only, ii) a broader range of assaults and iii) assaults and public nuisance offences. Hierarchical linear models (HLM) account for various sources of variability and correlation of longitudinal data and were used to determine reliability estimates for model parameters and in the calculation of the intraclass correlations (ICC).
Results: The broadest measure of alcohol-related crime (assaults and public nuisance offences) was found to have the highest reliability estimates between communities at a given time point and over time. This measure also had the highest ICC, indicating relatively more variability in the measure can be attributed to differences between towns rather than changes over time.
Conclusions: The HLM approach gives more accurate reliability estimates than could be assessed using a repeated measures ANOVA. For the communities from where these data derive, the broadest measure is the most reliable for comparing rates of alcohol-related crime between them, and for assessing intervention effects over time.
Using data from Australia’s most comprehensive survey of drug use among detainees, the 2009 collection of the Drug Use Monitoring in Australia (DUMA) program, it was shown that nearly a third of detainees reporting using two or more drugs in the 30 days prior to being detained. Cannabis was the primary drug used by 48 percent of detainees, followed by heroin (19%) and amphetamines (17%). Binary logistic models show that poly drug users are almost twice as likely as single drug users to self report the receipt of income from both drug dealing and other illegal sources, irrespective of any differences between frequency and type of drug used.
This report is the first of its kind in Australia to examine the self-reported use of illicit pharmaceuticals among a sample of police detainees surveyed as part of the Australian Institute of Criminology’s Drug Use Monitoring in Australia (DUMA) program. In all, 986 detainees were interviewed, of which 19 percent reported having recently used pharmaceutical drugs for non-medical purposes in the past 12 months—nearly five times as high as reported by the general Australian population, once again highlighting the value of conducting drug use research among criminal justice populations. In addition, this paper provides policymakers with valuable information about the reasons for use and the methods by which pharmaceuticals are typically accessed for non-medical purposes.
This report examines gambling within Australian society. It asks how frequently people gamble and how they view regulation, what they think about gambling problems and potential sources of assistance for problem gambling. The results suggest that there is a widespread recognition that gambling is harmful for some people. Australians support at least some degree of government regulation.
This report is part of an ongoing project undertaken by Turning Point Alcohol and Drug Centre, and which commenced in 1998. The rate of fatal heroin overdoses was increasing in Victoria in the late 1990s (Dietze, Fry, Rumbold, & Gerostamoulos, 2001), and in response to increasing concern about the prevalence of overdose, the current project was established to examine non-fatal heroin overdose in depth using ambulance service records (Dietze, Cvetkovski, Rumbold, & Miller, 1998). The project is funded by the Victorian Department of Health, formerly the Victorian Department of Human Services.
Work quality, not just quantity: work-related predictors of psychological distress, work-family interaction and alcohol consumption [pdf]
Centre for Work + Life, August 2011
This report describes the key findings from a study of the social and employment factors that impact on wellbeing. Three wellbeing outcomes are considered: mental health (psychological distress), work-family interaction and patterns of alcohol consumption.
This report is part of a larger research project „Developing an Australian evidence-base for policies and interventions on work hours, fatigue and work-family strain‟, funded through the SafeWork SA 2009 Commissioned Research Grants Program. The project is a collaboration between the University of South Australia‟s Centre for Work + Life and Centre for Sleep Research.
One of the main aims of this project is to inform the South Australia State Strategic Plan (SASP) target of reducing work-related injuries and illness (SASP target T2.11), and more generally to identify strategies to improve the quality of working life, support mental health and wellbeing inside and outside the workplace. The two psychological wellbeing outcomes align with the SASP targets for psychological wellbeing (T2.7) and work-life balance (T2.12)
[Page updated - 16 May 2012]
