Japanese Journal of Appl ied Psychology 2009 , Vo 1 .34 , No.1 , 58-59 Alcohol-relatedProblemsand DrinkDriving:A Questionnaire Survey of MaleDrivers 1 ) Kazuko OKAMURA * and Tatsuro MITSUI* A questionnaire survey was conducted on male drink drivingoffendersandacomparison groupin order to investigate the relation between alcohol- related problems and drink driving behavior in vi 巴wof basicevidenceprovidedon developingoptimal treat- mentprograms. Self-reports ondriving , drinking and drinkdrivingbehaviorwerecomparedbetweenand withinbothgroups. Theresultsshoweda s ignificant yetlimitedassociation between drinkinganddrink drivingbehavio r. Future studies should focus on psy- chological constructs together with alcohol problems key words:drink driving , alcohol-related probl 巴ms , recidivism Problems It isestablishedinwesterncountriesthatalcohol r 巴 latedproblems are among the most powerfulpredic torsofdrink-drive(DD) recidivism (Yu , 2000). The predictive power of Blood AlcoholConcentration (BAC) for identifying the seriousness of alcohol-r 巴 lat 巴 d problemsis alsowidelyrecognized. Thelegallimit of BreathAlcohol Concentration(BrAC)while drivingin Japan at 0.15 mg/l is stricter than inmany other coun- tries , andfewstudieshavebroachedth 巴 issueoflow BAC-leve 1 .The purpose of the study , as the f i . rst phase of an attempt to understand DD b 巴havior , is to investi gatetherelationbetweendrinkingandDDbehavior , not onlyby comparingDD offend 巴rsand a comparison groupbutalsobycomparingdifferenc 巴swithinthe groups. Method Design. A questionnaire surv 巴ywas conducted from January toMay 2007 onmaleDDoffenderswhose drivinglicense wassuspended (N= 159)andamale comparison group (N= 196).The selection criterion for comparison washavingavaliddriving l ic 巴 nseand livinginthesameor anearbyprefectureastheDD o 仔巴nders. Questionnaire. Inclllded intheqll 巴stJOnnalrewas information on demographics , driving (i.e. , driving dis- 1) ThisstudywassupportedbytheKAKENHI Grant (18730428) 本 Department of Traffic Science , NationalResearch Institute of Police Science Short Report tances , fr 巴 quency , sllbjectiverelianceonprivatecar llse) , drinking ( i .e. , dailyalcohol consumption , drinking fr 巴 quency) ,alcoholdependency screening question- nairesCAGE(Ewing , 1984)andKAST(Saito & Ike- gami , 1978) , andDDexperiences(e.g. , Br ACatdetec- tionbythepolice , DDfr 巴 qllencyinthelastyear ona semi-ordinal scale).Thecomparisongroupwasasked whether they experienced DDinthe last yea r. Subjec tiverelianceonprivatecarusewasmeasuredbypre senting11different sitlations on5-point scales. Recruitmen t. DDoffendersw 巴 resolicitedatthe drivinglicense centers inIbaraki andKanagawaupon theirentrytooffenderre-edllcationcourses. Weof- feredthemlunchandacouponworth ¥1000(achiev- ing a responsera t 巴 of72%) , and conductedthe s urvey duringlunchbreaks. The comparisongroupwas first recrllited frommenwho hadrenewedtheir licenses at the drivinglicensecenterinIbaraki ( π =24 , response rate of19%). We later r ecruitedmale driversbyplac- ingadsoffering a rewardof ¥4000 inso-caled free- papers. Bothgrollpsw 巴reassuredofcon 白 dentiality andtotal anonymity Results Descriptive statistics. DD off 巴 ndersreport 巴 dlydrink moreperday 仏イニ 72gofalcohol , SD= 64)andmore oftenthanthecomparisongrollp (1¥イ=37g , SD=40) AccordingtoKASTandCAGE , 38%and27%ofDD offenders were respectively categorized as being possi- blyalcohold 巴penden t . DDoffenders reportedlydrive longer distances (M ニ 18 ,4 83km/year , SD= 25 , 766) and more oftenthanthe comparisongroup 仏 {=9 , 042km/ year , SD= 10 , 698). Slch differences between the grollpsremainedevenafterb 巴 ingcontroledforthe prefectureswheretheyreside as acovariate (F (1,350) =16 , p<.OOO). DDoffend 巴rsalsoreported strongel sllbjective reliance on privat 巴carlse than the compari- son group (t (325) ニ 4β, p く。 000).BrAC was reportedby 102 DD offenders (M=0.26 mg/l , SD=0.15 , Min.=0.13 , Max.= 1. 00).Thirty-sev 巴 nperc 巴ntof DD 0 仔巴nderssta- ted their DD freqlency in the last year was “ only once ," while 31% stated “ 6 times or more." Ten percent of the comparison grollp admittedtheir DD experience inthe lastyear BrACandrelevantvariablesamongDDoffenders. Table1showsthePearsoncon 巴lationcoefficientbe- tween BrAC and relevant variables for DD 0仔巴nders.A signi f i . cantcorrelationwasfoundbetweenslbjective relianceon private caruseand drinking variables Bas 巴 donthisr 巴 sult ,regression analysis topredict BrACwas conductedusingfiveindependent variables (withfourvariablesfOlndtobesignificantlycorre- latedwithBrACasshowninTable1 , plllSDDfre- qllency inthe last year). Upon applying the backward elimination method , the KAST score and DD freqll 巴ncy