Objective

Comparing people’s momentary and retrospective reports of substance use and sexual activity can illuminate discrepant recall biases across these behaviors. Extant research suggests that people tend to underreport alcohol use on retrospective surveys and overreport sexual activity. We provided an updated account of these biases, extending previous work by looking at alcohol- and cannabis-involved sexual activity as well as potential gender differences in recall biases.

Method

Using a sample of adults (n = 110; 58.2% women), we administered surveys three times a day for 28 days to measure momentary alcohol and cannabis use, sexual activity, and substance-involved sexual activity. At the end of this momentary assessment, participants completed a retrospective survey assessing how frequently they engaged in these behaviors during the 28-day period.

Results

We compared participants’ momentary reports—which were scaled to account for compliance rates—and retrospective surveys. While there were no significant differences in momentary and retrospective reports of alcohol or cannabis use, participants reported higher rates of sexual activity and alcohol-involved sexual activity on the retrospective surveys than the momentary reports. Effect sizes for significant differences were medium to large (Cohen’s d: 0.26–0.67).

Conclusions

Alcohol- and cannabis-involved sexual activity tend to be overreported on retrospective surveys, and preliminary findings suggest that these recall biases may vary by gender. Researchers interested in the co-occurrence of substance use and sexual activity should be aware of this potential random error and consider how to reduce recall biases based on method of data collection.

中文翻译：

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关于酒精或大麻使用、性活动及其同时发生的瞬时与回顾性报告

客观的

比较人们对物质使用和性活动的瞬时和回顾性报告可以阐明这些行为之间存在差异的回忆偏见。现有研究表明，人们倾向于在回顾性调查中少报酒精使用，多报性活动。我们提供了对这些偏见的更新说明，通过查看与酒精和大麻有关的性活动以及回忆偏见中的潜在性别差异来扩展以前的工作。

方法

使用成人样本（n  = 110；58.2% 的女性），我们每天进行 3 次调查，持续 28 天，以测量瞬时酒精和大麻使用、性活动和与物质有关的性活动。在这个短暂的评估结束时，参与者完成了一项回顾性调查，评估他们在 28 天期间从事这些行为的频率。

结果

我们比较了参与者的瞬时报告（根据合规率进行了调整）和回顾性调查。虽然关于酒精或大麻使用的瞬时和回顾性报告没有显着差异，但与瞬时报告相比，参与者在回顾性调查中报告的性活动和涉及酒精的性活动的比率更高。显着差异的影响大小为中到大（Cohen's d：0.26-0.67）。

结论

在回顾性调查中，涉及酒精和大麻的性活动往往被高估，初步调查结果表明，这些回忆偏见可能因性别而异。对物质使用和性活动同时发生感兴趣的研究人员应该意识到这种潜在的随机错误，并考虑如何根据数据收集方法减少回忆偏差。