Collecting real-world evidence via ‘at home’ assessments in ambulatory patients or healthy volunteers is becoming increasingly important, both for research purposes and in clinical practice. However, given the mobile technology that is frequently used for these assessments, concise assessments are preferred. The current study compared single-item ratings with multiple-item subscale scores of the same construct, by calculating the corresponding Bland and Altman 95% limits of agreement interval. The analysis showed that single-item ratings are usually in good agreement with assessments of their corresponding subscale. In the case of more complex multimodal constructs, single-item assessments were much less often in agreement with multiple-item questionnaire outcomes. The use of single-item assessments is advocated as they more often incorporate assessments of all aspects of a certain construct (including the presence, severity, and impact of the construct under investigation) compared to composite symptom scores.

The authors used a flicker paradigm for inducing change blindness as a more direct method of measuring attentional bias in problem drinkers in treatment than the previously used, modified Stroop, Posner, and dual-task paradigms. First, in an artificially constructed visual scene comprising digitized photographs of real alcohol-related and neutral objects, problem drinkers detected a change made to an alcohol-related object more quickly than to a neutral object. Age- and gender-matched social drinkers showed no such difference. Second, problem drinkers given the alcohol-related change to detect showed a negative correlation between the speed with which the change was detected and the problem severity as measured by the number of times previously treated. Coupled with other data from heavy and light social drinkers, the data support a graded continuity of attentional bias underpinning the length of the consumption continuum.

The COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns were accompanied by an abrupt transition from face-to-face education to online education. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on academic functioning and mood in Dutch pharmacy students and PhD candidates. A total of n = 341 participants completed an online survey including questions on mood and academic functioning, assessed retrospectively for before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, during COVID-19 lockdown, significantly more time was spent on academic activities, and study grades/output significantly improved. However, the overall effects were of small magnitude, and there was great variability among students, reporting either improved, unchanged or poorer academic functioning. Compared to before COVID-19, the lockdown periods were associated with significantly increased levels of stress, anxiety, depression, fatigue, and loneliness, and a significant reduction in optimism and happiness. Significant negative correlations were found between ‘performance quality’ and stress, ‘performance quality’ and fatigue, ‘study grades/output’ and stress, and between ‘study grades/output’ and fatigue. Correlations of mood and items related to academic interactions were not statistically significant. Differential effects were seen when the data was analyzed according to sex, living situation, and ethnicity, revealing that women, students living alone, and those with a migration background reported that COVID-19 lockdowns had greater negative mood effects and a more negative impact on academic functioning. Poorer sleep quality and reduced quality of life were significantly associated with reduced mood, as well as reduced academic performance quality and role satisfaction. Regression analysis revealed that being young and not having a non-Western migration background were predictors of improved performance quality. However, only being young was a significant predictor of improved study grades/output during the COVID-19 pandemic. Increased levels of stress and fatigue were significant predictors of both reduced performance quality and poorer study grades/output during the COVID-19 pandemic. In conclusion, for the sample as a whole, the transition to online education during the COVID-19 lockdown was judged as having significant positive effects on academic performance. The lockdown periods were associated with significantly reduced mood and reduced social interactions. It should be taken into account that about one third of students reported academic functioning to be poorer during the COVID-19 pandemic. This represents a substantial group of students who require more attention and guidance to make a successful transition to online education and cope with lockdown-associated stress and fatigue.

In alcohol hangover research, both naturalistic designs and randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are successfully employed to study the causes, consequences, and treatments of hangovers. Although increasingly applied in both social sciences and medical research, the suitability of naturalistic study designs remains a topic of debate. In both types of study design, screening participants and conducting assessments on-site (e.g., psychometric tests, questionnaires, and biomarker assessments) are usually equally rigorous and follow the same standard operating procedures. However, they differ in the levels of monitoring and restrictions imposed on behaviors of participants before the assessments are conducted (e.g., drinking behaviors resulting in the next day hangover). These behaviors are highly controlled in RCTs and uncontrolled in naturalistic studies. As a result, the largest difference between naturalistic studies and RCTs is their ecological validity, which is usually significantly lower for RCTs and (related to that) the degree of standardization of experimental intervention, which is usually significantly higher for RCTs. In this paper, we specifically discuss the application of naturalistic study designs and RCTs in hangover research. It is debated whether it is necessary to control certain behaviors that precede the hangover state when the aim of a study is to examine the effects of the hangover state itself. If the preceding factors and behaviors are not in the focus of the research question, a naturalistic study design should be preferred whenever one aims to better mimic or understand real-life situations in experimental/intervention studies. Furthermore, to improve the level of control in naturalistic studies, mobile technology can be applied to provide more continuous and objective real-time data, without investigators interfering with participant behaviors or the lab environment impacting on the subjective state. However, for other studies, it may be essential that certain behaviors are strictly controlled. It is, for example, vital that both test days are comparable in terms of consumed alcohol and achieved hangover severity levels when comparing the efficacy and safety of a hangover treatment with a placebo treatment day. This is best accomplished with the help of a highly controlled RCT design.