Improving the Estimation of Blood Alcohol Concentration from Reported Drinking

Since the early work of Widmark, and as refined by subsequent research, estimation of blood alcohol concentration (eBAC) from the number of drinks consumed over a given period of time has been well-established. These formulations are increasingly being applied to ecological momentary assessment data to characterize trajectories of eBAC within drinking bouts. In this paper, we illustrate how this can in some cases result in significant underestimation of BAC. We provide a simple improvement to the methodology applying the same formulas and use an empirical example to demonstrate the important effects on eBAC that result.