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© 2020 Arfer et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.

Abstract

Prenatal alcohol-drinking is often measured with self-report, but it is unclear whether mothers give more accurate answers when asked while pregnant or some time after their pregnancy. There is also the question of whether to measure drinking in a dichotomous or continuous fashion. We sought to examine how the timing and scale of self-reports affected the content of reports. From a sample of 576 black mothers around Cape Town, South Africa, we compared prenatal reports of prenatal drinking with 5-year retrospective reports, and dichotomous metrics (drinking or abstinent) with continuous metrics (fluid ounces of absolute alcohol drunk per day). Amounts increased over the 5-year period, whereas dichotomous measures found mothers less likely to report drinking later. All four measures were weakly associated with birth weight, birth height, child head circumference soon after birth, and child intelligence at age 5. Furthermore, neither reporting time nor the scale of measurement were consistently related to the strengths of these associations. Our results point to problems with self-report, particularly with this population, but we recommend post-birth continuous measures as the best of the group for their flexibility and their consistency with previous research.

Details

Title
South African mothers’ immediate and 5-year retrospective reports of drinking alcohol during pregnancy
Author
Arfer, Kodi B; Mary J O’Connor; Tomlinson, Mark; Rotheram-Borus, Mary Jane
First page
e0231518
Section
Research Article
Publication year
2020
Publication date
Apr 2020
Publisher
Public Library of Science
e-ISSN
19326203
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2390637301
Copyright
© 2020 Arfer et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.