Anheuser-Busch Announces Poll Results: Drinking Alcohol IQ Test

ST. LOUIS (July 2, 2014) – Just in time for the July 4^th weekend, Anheuser-Busch today announced results of an online survey conducted on its behalf by Harris Poll on responsible drinking in America – The Anheuser-Busch Responsible Drinking Alcohol IQ Test. The results found that over three-quarters (78%) of Americans aged 21+ who ever have the occasion to drink alcohol beverages plan to do so this holiday weekend, making these survey results important in holiday planning and keeping our roads safe.

The survey of nearly 2,000 U.S. adults ages 21 and older, conducted in mid-June, found that three in five Americans (61%) are aware of the national Blood Alcohol Concentration limit (0.08) for drunk driving. Other good news is that four out of five Americans (82%) aged 21+ are aware that a person’s blood alcohol level can continue to rise after they stop drinking. 

“By and large, people are knowledgeable about responsible behavior – but there’s still work to be done to achieve a collective social consciousness around putting that responsible behavior in action,” said Kathy Casso, Vice President of Corporate Social Responsibility at Anheuser-Busch. “While drunk driving fatalities have decreased 51 percent over the last three decades, more than 10,000 drunk driving related fatalities occurred in the US in 2012.  It’s important to remember that all drunk-driving fatalities are preventable, and we at Anheuser-Busch, along with our wholesalers, have committed more than one billion dollars over the last three decades to promote responsible drinking in the hopes that responsibility is second-nature.”

Other Survey Findings Include:

Methodology

This survey was conducted online within the United States between June 13^th and 17^th, 2014 among 1,978 adults aged 21 and older by Harris Poll on behalf of Anheuser-Busch via its Quick Query omnibus product. Figures for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, region and household income were weighted where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population. Propensity score weighting was used to adjust for respondents’ propensity to be online.

All sample surveys and polls, whether or not they use probability sampling, are subject to multiple sources of error which are most often not possible to quantify or estimate, including sampling error, coverage error, error associated with nonresponse, error associated with question wording and response options, and post-survey weighting and adjustments. Therefore, Harris Poll avoids the words “margin of error” as they are misleading. All that can be calculated are different possible sampling errors with different probabilities for pure, unweighted, random samples with 100% response rates. These are only theoretical because no published polls come close to this ideal.

Respondents for this survey were selected from among those who have agreed to participate in our surveys. The data have been weighted to reflect the composition of the adult population. Because the sample is based on those who agreed to participate in the panel, no estimates of theoretical sampling error can be calculated.