Page 59 - PhD GT

(McBride 1995) use have been found to be high amongst people attending agencies for treatment of alcohol dependence and misuse. The influence of the substance is shaped by current state of intoxication or withdrawal, both at the time the event occurred or at the time of retrieval. Transient cognitive deficits relating to memory and resulting from a bout of heavy drinking can be measured in patients with alcohol dependence up to ten days after cessation of alcohol consumption (Ron 1983). The history of substance use, most specifically drinking, where it has resulted in brain tissue damage, may also be relevant.
Ptacek et al. (1994) found limited correspondence between daily assessment of current coping and retrospective coping recall where there was only a five day time lag between current recording of coping strategies and retrospective report for the same activities. These authors felt that they had maximised the conditions for accurate recall by requiring study participants to record and therefore be fully conscious of methods of coping at the time they occurred. A number of methodological difficulties are identified in the study: the use of different instruments to assess coping at the two different times, the specific nature of the identified stressor (an upcoming examination) and the highly specific nature of the study group (namely undergraduate students). However, this study does emphasise some of the problems of the influence of concurrent events, thoughts and feelings and the interpretation of events during storage and recall identified by Hammersley (1994) and others discussed below.
Grant et al. (1997), on the other hand, found that self-reports of alcohol consumption, collected on average 231 days (range 53 to 570) after the drinking had occurred were reasonably accurate when compared to self-report immediately following the drinking period in question. The authors found that:
“Particularly for global drinking measures such as percentage of drinking days and volume of consumption, the correlation coefficients from our study approach the test re-test reliability of alcohol measures over short spans of time.” (Grant et al. 1997 p. 604)
Furthermore, this study found no systematic bias in over-reporting or under-reporting at the point of remote reconstruction.
3.2.2 Social desirability
The embarrassment experienced in reporting the behaviour, whether this is associated with 47