Understanding international variation in national low-risk drinking guidelines: health policy report
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background The harmful use of alcohol is associated with adverse health, social, and economic consequences. National low-risk drinking guidelines provide evidence-based advice on how to reduce the risks associated with alcohol consumption and provide a basis for other alcohol-control interventions. There is substantial variation between guidelines and no international consensus on what constitutes 'low-risk' drinking. These discrepancies may lead to misinterpretation of the guidance, and such variation may undermine public confidence in experts and be exploited by the alcohol industry. Methods This project had two main components: (i) a literature review, to identify any new evidence from January 2016 to August 2019 suggesting a recommended threshold for 'low-risk' drinking; (ii) the analysis of six examples of national guidelines. Those from the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and USA were examined for information about the utilisation of evidence to inform guidance, as well as details of the guideline development process. Thematic analysis of the UK, Canadian and Australian guidance explored wider influences on the guidelines. Results The literature review highlighted that all alcohol consumption carries some degree of risk. Content analysis of the guidelines emphasised the substantial variation in national guidance. Differences in the use of evidence and guideline development process may have given rise to at least some of the observed variation. Thematic analysis suggested that wider influences, such as differences in societal values, may also have contributed to disparities in the guidelines. Conclusions It may be possible to standardise certain areas of the development process, such as agreeing what constitutes an 'acceptable' level of alcohol-attributable risk. Further research is required to verify whether these results are generalisable to other countries, and to determine the most appropriate statistical model for risk calculations. Key messages The factors which determine guideline development are manifold and complex. Any level of alcohol consumption carries some degree of risk.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.152 | 0.322 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.007 | 0.011 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.009 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.008 |
| Research integrity | 0.006 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".