AbstractTwo measures of alcohol consumption were used to predict groups of alcohol problems in 21 general population studies from 11 countries to determine (a) if quantity of drinking per occasion or frequency of drinking per month constituted significant “risk” for alcohol problems, having controlled for each as well as individual‐level and aggregate‐level variables winch might confound these relationships and (b) if these associations mere homogeneous across studies. A two‐tiered analysis assessed these relationships within each study by modeling age, sex, quantity per occasion and frequency per month as predictors of alcohol problems. Mela‐analysis combined test statistics to determine if they were homogeneous across studies. The meta‐analysis was repealed, blocking for per capita consumption of alcohol (a trait of nations thought to measure drinking norms) and the female rate of suicide (a trail of nations thought to measure societal‐level stress). When only individual‐level variables were controlled (age and sex), both quantity and frequency were risk factors for each drinking problem. However, except in the case of the association of quantity with alcohol treatment, the magnitude of these risks were heterogeneous across studies. When blocking for the societal‐level traits, each had more relevance for some, but not all, of the relationships between consumption and problems. Particularly striking was the welt‐documented finding that per capita consumption of alcohol significantly distinguished the relationships of frequency of drinking and health problems (while the female suicide rate did not) and the previously undocumented finding that the female suicide rate significantly distinguished the relationships of both quantity and frequency with treatment (while the per capita consumption of alcohol did not). These findings suggest that the impact of norms and the impact of societal stress in groups have different but significant consequences for the relationships of co