Study: People Who Live Close To Bars Drink More Heavily « CBS Atlanta

Study: People Who Live Close To Bars Drink More Heavily « CBS Atlanta: "A new study finds that people who live close to a bar tend to drink more."

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I always take studies with a grain of salt. Studies are conducted by people who want to find statistically significant relationships and publish. With that in mind, it does not surprise me when they find a cause-and-effect relationship. I fully expect many studies find a relationship that cannot be reproduced.

But the other thing I like to do when I hear of some cause-and-effect relationship in a news article is: (1) identify the implied cause-and-effect of the article, and (2) think of alternative explanations for the relationship.

Of course one cause-and-effect relationship implied here is that when people live close to bars, they drink more heavily. That's probably true. If you don't have to drive home, you're probably more likely to drink heavily.

But another explanation is that people who like to drink heavily, live close to bars. Now, they seem to control for that here by tracking drinking of the same people as they move to and away from bars, but it appears the result is less pronounced:

“Moving place of residence close to, or far from, a bar appears to be associated with a small corresponding increase or decrease in risky alcohol behavior,”