Heaviness of Alcohol Use, Alcohol Problems, and Subjective Intoxication Predict Discrepant Drinking Reports in Daily Life

Background Self‐reported consumption is pervasive in alcohol research, though retrospective recall bias is a concern. Fine‐grained methods are designed to limit retrospection; yet, discrepancies can arise when comparing responses on fine‐grained surveys with responses to retrospective surveys across weeks or months. Many fine‐grained studies use both repeated daily surveys (RDS) and end‐of‐day (EOD) summaries, but little research has examined whether these survey types are consistent. The purpose of this study was to quantify the magnitude and directionality of discrepancy between EOD summaries and RDS and identify alcohol‐related predictors of discrepancy. Methods As a part of a larger study, college student alcohol and cannabis users (N = 341; 53% women; Mage = 19.79 years) were recruited to complete 56 days of data collection, including 5 daily assessments of their substance use and related constructs, one of which included an EOD summary of the previous day. Generalized linear mixed‐effects models were used to examine between‐ and within‐person predictors of a 5‐category, discrepancy outcome: no discrepancy, low discrepancy where RDS