The structure of drinking-related consequences in alcoholic women

This study examines the structure of drinking-related consequences in women in treatment facilities by describing indices that were constructed by submitting 69 measures to factor analysis. Two hundred fifty-four (254) alcoholic women responded to self-report interview items that measured the consequences that the respondent perceived to follow or result from her drinking. The items were submitted to a series of exploratory principal component analyses. Nine factors, social withdrawal, sexuality, early effects, maternal role, accidents, symptoms, work, illness, and relationship conflict, emerged in the rotated solution, with the majority of coefficient alphas in the 0.6 to 0.8 range. Internal reliabilities for the indices remained sufficiently high across age subgroups in the sample.