Biopsychosocial discriminators of alcoholic and nonalcoholic women

Sixty alcoholic and 60 nonalcoholic women were compared on six variables chosen to represent the biological, psychological, and sociocultural approaches to alcoholism research. Significant differences were found between the two groups on all variables. Compared to the nonalcoholic women, the alcoholic women had more alcoholic relatives, had been treated for more health problems, were more depressed, had lower levels of self-esteem, were more deeply invested in meeting stereotypical feminine sex-role expectations, and perceived themselves as less successful in meeting the expectations of significant others. Scores on four variables--depression, number of alcoholic relatives, treatment for health problems, and meeting others' expectations--made linear contributions to discriminating the groups. These results suggest that alcoholism in women is a multifactorial problem and that theory-guided research may be more useful in elucidating the etiology of female alcoholism than unidimensional and/or atheoretical approaches. Clinical implications of the results are also discussed.