Response burden in questions about alcohol consumption and alcohol-related problems

 Among the methodological problems involved in studies in the field of alcohol consumption and
alcohol-related problems is the response burden. This is defined as a subjective phenomenon,
a function between the time and the cognitive/emotional demand of the information to be
sought. The underestimation of the response burden can compromise the validity of the
results obtained, and increase the costs of research. The purpose of this paper is to analyze
methodological aspects that could be related to the response burden in alcohol consumption
and alcohol-related problems research. In this narrative review we used search engines PubMed,
Scopus, Scielo and Google Scholar, with the search terms “response burden”, “respondent
burden”, “response fatigue”, “subject burden”, “carga de la respuesta”, “carga de respuesta”,
“carga para los encuestados”, “carga de los informantes”, “carga de los participantes”. The related
factors found include the type of design, population, time, length and content of the instrument,
setting and the response burden in qualitative studies. Lastly, some recommendations to reduce
their occurrence according to different methodological decisions are included.