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Published on: November 8, 2024
Drinking restraint, alcohol consumption and alcohol dependence among children of alcoholics
1Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, P.O. Box 871104, Tempe, Arizona 85287-1104, USA. ryan.trim@asu.edu
Objective:
Previous research has found drinking restraint to be a risk factor for alcohol use and alcohol-related problems in normative populations, but has not tested these relations in high-risk populations. The current study tested whether drinking restraint predicted alcohol-related outcomes in the same way for high-risk and low-risk individuals and tested whether there was a quadratic effect of drinking restraint on alcohol-related outcomes.
Method:
Data from an ongoing longitudinal study of children of alcoholics (COAs; n = 189) and controls (n = 192) were collected at two time points 5 years apart.
Results:
The prospective findings extended previous cross-sectional literature by replicating the main effects of drinking restraint as a risk factor for subsequent drinking for controls. For COAs, however, higher levels of drinking restraint were associated with lower levels of later drinking. There was also a quadratic effect of drinking restraint in the prediction of alcohol dependence diagnoses, suggesting that those at the extreme levels of drinking restraint were least likely to develop alcohol dependence.
Conclusions:
The relation of drinking restraint to alcohol-related outcomes may be more complex than previously hypothesized because it may work in different directions for high- and low-risk individuals and may have a nonlinear relationship to diagnostic outcomes.
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