Spożycie napojów alkoholowych w Polsce w 1980 r

The study described in the paper and has been conceived as a continuation and partly a repetition or studies carried out in 1961 and 1962 by A. Swięcicki and then in 1968 by J. K. Falewicz. All of these studies were carried out by the Centre for Public Opinion Survey (now: Centre for Public Opinion Survey and Program Studies) of the Committee for Radio and TV in Warsaw. The instrument used in them was a questionnaire filled in by the interviewer during his interview with the respondent. The first study, conducted in February and March 1961, included a sample of a population aged 20 and over, while in the second one, which was made in October 1962, u sample aged 18 and over was included. In both studies, the assumed samples numbered 3000 respondents each, the obtained sample being 95.6 per cent and 93.6 per cent of the assumed sample respectively. The third study was carried out in March and April 1968: it included a sample of population aged 18 and over (assumed sample - 3212 respondents, obtained sample – 91.7 per cent). The present, i.e., the fourth study, was conducted in September 1980 and it included a sample of population aged 16 and over, of the assumed size of 2000 respondents; the obtained sample numbered 1972 persons, which is 98.6 per cent of the assumed one. In the case of all the four studies the deviation of the obtained sample from the assumed one was slight which permitted them to be treated as random sample of the general population. The chief aim of the 1980 study was to obtain data which would be comparable with those previously acquired and those up-to-date, concerning the distribution of consumption of alcohol among the population of Poland. The previous studies, dating back at least a dozen years, were not only old, but they were carried out in the period when general level of consumption of alcohol was approximately half of that in 1980. It seemed more difficult to answer the question to what degree the observations then made still applied to the new situation. There was a demand for some new data it last to replace the guesses made from the factual basis which, as the years went by, became more and more uncertain. In spite of the fact that the present study wbs made in the same way as the previous ones, it seems that the above aims have not been achieved. The data now obtained are not fully comparable with the previous, first of all because the 1980 survey successfully covered a considerably smaller amount of alcohol consumed in our country than those of 1961 and 1962. Undoubtedly, this was caused by various factors, the most important of which being probably the fact that the representation among the respondents of persons who drank intensively and most intensively was scantier in the present study than it had been in the studies conducted by A. Swięcicki. Consequently, the 1961-1962 and 1980 surveys concerned different categories of drinking persons, the ranges of which were not identical in both cases. As regards the scond aim of the study, which was to obtain current data on consumption of alcohol in Poland, we were unsuccessful again, as life proved to run too fast. The 1980 survey was carried out in October 1980, that is one might say at the last moment before the difficulties with alcohol supplies began, as yet unknown in our country, which resulted in regulated sale of alcoholic beverages. This caused the appearance of new phenomena as well as the aggravation of those hitherto existing, Undoubtedly, it was a new phenomenon that people started to buy alcohol not only to consume it, but also to gret rid of the rapidly devaluating money, or in order to obtain a kind of exchange value. Other new phenomena were: trade in coupons entitling one to buy alcohol, and the appearance of black-market prices of spirits produced by the State-controlled distilleries; in certain periods, these prices were twice as high as the official ones. Speaking of aggravation of the existing phenomena, we had in mind first of all the illicit distillation of liquor, the attractiveness of which increased greatly in the face of joint effect of two circumstances: the rapid increase in the price of legally distilled and imported alcohol, and the difficulties in its legal (and even illegal) purchase. It was impossible for the 1980 survey to answer the following questions: what the influence of all these phenomena on the patterns of drinking that had already been shaped before in our country was, and how these patterns were modified. It is known that people drink somewhat differently now. It may be supposed that the persons who used to consume small amounts of alcohol before and who used to drink with restraint now drink less or do not drink at all, while those who used to drink much before - even if they do drink less now, the difference is slight, the illegally distilled liquor playing a greater part in the total amount of alcohol they consume. As to this last problem, opinions are expressed according to which consumption of the illegally distilles liquor has become a much more popular experiences in the course of the ‘80s than it had been before. Finally, conjectures are made that alcohol-dependent persons, after the first period of difficulties with providing themselves with the amount of alcohol which would be adequate to their habits, in general have now found ways to satisfy their needs in this respect. It remains a guess if the above conjectures are true or not, and the same applies to suppositions concerning persistent or temporary character of the abovementioned changes in patterns of consumption of alcohol. Thus the results of the survey describe the situation as it was a few years ago as this situation undoubtedly changed later on. As the paper clearly shows, consumption of alcohol in Poland is a common phenomenon: an everyday habit for many of our fellow citizens, a regular one (though not necessarily at regular intervals)- for the majority. In a statistical-descriptive sense drinking should, therefore, be termed normal behaviour, as it appears more or less regularly in the behaviour of a majority of adult members of our society, whenever they find themselves in situations such as celebrations family, meeting friends, or official occasions. The above remarks by no means solve the question of estimation of drinking, which- in spite of its habitual character in the statistical-descriptive sense- may in some cases be recognized as most deeply pathological in the medical sense, and in the same adn frequently also in other cases- as pathological in its social expression. As regards the medical appraisal- the questionnaire did not contain a large set of questions of this kind, therefore, it was able to yield but a most scanty basis fof conjectures as to the symptoms of alcohol dependence of some of the respondents. The situation was different as regards the social appraisal of the consumption of alcohol. In order to make use of such an appraisal, an initial poblem had to be solved: what amount, frequency, and way of consuming alcohol should or should not be regarded as that included within the limits of a „social norm”. The problem is complex, for, on the one hand, the opinions as to where the limits are vary in our socjety, and, on the other hand, there are probably many such limits, depending not only on the person who is to fix them, but also on that to whom they may apply. It is generally known that in our society there are advocates of prohibition (who are of opinion that zero consumption should be the social norm), as well as propagators of „reasonable consumption” which is a term with many shades, and finally adherents of opinion that consumption of alcohol is a private matter for everyone to decide by himself (that is those who consider any kind of drinking, as well as abstinence, to come within the limits of socially approved norm). Apart from the advocates of the two extreme opinions, which provide one norm for all members of the society, others, i.e., the propagators of „reasonable” drinking tend to emploi a norm according to who the drinking person is. This finds expression in a different attitude towards drinking by men and women, tolerance towards the drinking by adults accompanied by strict disapproval in the case of the youth, different expectations as to the attitude towards alcohol drinking by members of different socio-professional groups. In this situation, with the lack of a common opinion as regards „socially normal” drinking, it seemed preferable to refrain from estimating the alcohol consumption in terms of social pathology. In a survey of alcohol consumption in which samples of population of the entire country or a smaller territory are included, it is vital how the questions about the respondents’ drinking habits are asked. In the research practice, two solutions of this problem have been provided: first, to ask about the last occasion on which the respondent drank, what he drank then, how much he drank and in what circumstances, and second, to ask about his drinking within a given, shorter or longer, period of time. It has been a tradition of Polish studies in this field to choose the first of these solutions, so this method has also been employed in the present study. The last occasion was treated as typical of the respondent’s way of drinking, and a yearly consumption was calculated for each of tchem, as well as for all persons included in the sample. As compared with the data on alcohol sale gathered in our country, it appeared that the 1980 survey covered 43 per cent of the total of consumed vodka. This percentage corresponds to that which can be found in analogous foreign studies, yeti t is considerably lower than the one obtained by A. Święcicki in his 1961 and particularly 1962 studies. The probable effect on the comparability of this studies with the present one has already be

Theology · Agricultural economics and policies · Nutrition and Health Studies · Philosophy

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