Thailand’s national alcohol survey as a policy monitoring tool

The purpose of this paper is to assess to what extent the Smoking and Alcohol Drinking Behavior Survey (SADBeS), the national alcohol survey, could be used in monitoring goals and cost-effective measures suggested by the National Alcohol Strategy (NAS) issued by public health authorities in 2010.

The NAS was reviewed. Strategies, measures, and corresponding indicators were extracted. Questionnaire items used in the 2014 SADBeS were assessed in comparison with those indicators.

Four primary indicators indicate overall success of the NAS. In all, 6 out of 15 measures were in accordance with best-buy or good-buy policies – cost-effective policies suggested by the World Health Organization. After excluding indicators unlikely to be obtained from population-based surveys, the SADBeS could be used in monitoring 5 out of 14 indicators corresponding to best-buy or good-buy measures. Of 103 questionnaire items, 26.2 percent of items could be used to monitor primary indicators of the NAS; 34.0 percent could be used to estimate indicators corresponding to best-buy or good-buy measures. Overall, only 35.0 percent of questionnaire items provided useful information for monitoring primary indicators and cost-effective measures suggested in the NAS.

The SADBeS questionnaire items should be added or replaced to cover feasibly obtained indicators corresponding to best-buy or good-buy policies in the next wave of the survey.

This is the first study addressing the compatibility between the national strategy and the national alcohol survey. It also includes the overview of Thailand’s alcohol strategy, which is, to the author’s knowledge, never presented in any English articles.