The GENAHTO Project (Gender and Alcohol's Harm to Others): Design and methods for a multinational study of alcohol's harm to persons other than the drinker.

Abstract

Aims: Most alcohol research has focused on how drinking harms the drinker. Research on alcohol's harms to others (AHTO) has studied primarily single or small groups of countries. This article describes the methodology of a new multinational study - GENAHTO - of how social and cultural contexts are related to AHTO, from the perspectives of both perpetrators and victims.

Design: The GENAHTO Project uses surveys in 21 countries that provide data from drinkers who report causing harms to others, and surveys in 16 countries that provide data from victims of AHTO. The countries surveyed vary widely in alcohol policies, drinking cultures, gender-role definitions, and socioeconomic conditions.

Participants: More than 140,000 men and women, aged 15-84, participated in the surveys.

Measures: Individual-level measures include demographics, alcohol use patterns, and alcohol-related harms. Regional- and societal-level measures include socioeconomic conditions, drinking patterns, alcohol policies, gender inequality, and income inequality.

Findings: The project seeks to identify characteristics of AHTO victims and perpetrators; within-country regional differences in AHTO; and associations between national alcohol polices and individual and regional levels of AHTO.

Conclusions: GENAHTO is the first project to assess AHTO in diverse societies. Its findings can inform policies to abate AHTO in varying cultural contexts.