- Title
- Changes in the incidence of assault after restrictions on late-night alcohol sales in New Zealand: evaluation of a natural experiment using hospitalization and police data
- Creator
- Connor, Jennie; Maclennan, Brett; Huckle, Taisia; Romeo, Jose; Davie, Gabrielle; Kypri, Kypros
- Relation
- Addiction Vol. 116, Issue 4, p. 788-798
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/add.15206
- Publisher
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2021
- Description
- Aims: To estimate the effect of national restrictions on late‐night availability of alcohol on alcohol‐related assault at a population level as indicated by (1) change in hospitalizations for weekend assaults and (2) change in the proportion of assaults documented by police that occur at night. Design Evaluation of a natural experiment, involving: (1) pre–post comparisons of age‐specific incidence rates, adjusted for seasonality and background trend using Poisson regression;and (2) interrupted time–series analyses, using seasonal auto regressive integrated moving average (SARIMA) models of national data with no control site. Setting: New Zealand. Participants: (1) Inpatients discharged from NZ hospitals following assault during the weekend (Friday–Sunday) from 2004 to 2016 (n= 14996) and (2) cases of assault recorded by NZ Police from 2012 to 2018. Intervention: introduction of national maximum trading hours for all on‐licence (8 a.m.–4 a.m.) and off‐licence premises (7 a.m.–11 p.m.), abolishing existing 24‐hour licences, on 18 December 2013. Measurements: (1) Age‐specific incidence of hospitalization for assault on Friday, Saturday or Sunday from the national hospital discharge data set, excluding short‐stay emergency department admissions and (2) proportion of weekly police‐documented assaults occurring between 9 p.m. and 5.59 a.m., from NZ Police Demand and Activity data set. Findings: Following the restrictions, weekend hospitalized assaults declined by 11% [incidence rate ratio(IRR) = 0.89; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.84, 0.94], with the greatest reduction among 15–29‐year‐olds(IRR = 0.82; 95% CI = 0.76, 0.89). There was an absolute reduction (step change) of 1.8% (95% CI = 0.2, 3.5%) in the proportion of police‐documented assaults occurring at night, equivalent to 9.70 (95% CI = 0.10, 19.30) fewer night‐time assaults per week, out of 207.4. Conclusions: The 2013 implementation of national maximum trading hours for alcohol in NZ was followed by reductions in two complementary indicators of alcohol‐related assault, consistent with beneficial effects of modest nation‐wide restrictions on the late‐night availability of alcohol.
- Subject
- alcohol; assault; availability; legislation; natural experiment; restriction; trading hours
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1461699
- Identifier
- uon:46277
- Identifier
- ISSN:0965-2140
- Rights
- This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Connor, Jennie; Maclennan, Brett; Huckle, Taisia; Romeo, Jose; Davie, Gabrielle; Kypri, Kypros. “Changes in the incidence of assault after restrictions on late-night alcohol sales in New Zealand: evaluation of a natural experiment using hospitalization and police data”. Addiction Vol. 116, Issue 4, p. 788-798 (2021), which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/add.15206. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions. This article may not be enhanced, enriched or otherwise transformed into a derivative work, without express permission from Wiley or by statutory rights under applicable legislation. Copyright notices must not be removed, obscured or modified. The article must be linked to Wiley’s version of record on Wiley Online Library and any embedding, framing or otherwise making available the article or pages thereof by third parties from platforms, services and websites other than Wiley Online Library must be prohibited.
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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