Drinking in the injury event: a comparison of emergency room populations in the United States, Mexico, and Spain.

Variables related to drinking in the injury event were compared among probability samples of emergency room patients in Contra Costa County, California (N = 1,001), Mexico City (N = 1,688) and Barcelona, Spain (N = 1,684). Drinking companions and places of drinking prior to injury, place of injury associated with drinking, amount of alcohol consumed, proximity of drinking with the injury event, perceived drunkenness at the time, and causal attribution of drinking with the event were all found to vary among the samples. The data suggest that the context in which alcohol is involved in the injury event is affected by the context in which alcohol is typically consumed in a culture and is important in analyzing alcohol's role in injury occurrence and situations which may be considered high-risk for alcohol-related injuries.