Hopelessness in alcohol- and heroin-dependent women

Administered the Beck Hopelessness Scale to 20 alcoholic and 20 heroin-addicted women. A Weighted G analysis then was performed with the 20 dichotomous items of this scale to determine whether specific items differentiated between the two types of women. The samples were assigned randomly to 20-person test and calibration groups, and each subgroup was represented by 10 whites and 10 blacks. Based on the classification estimates yielded by the Weighted G analysis for the test sample, 18 of the 20 women in the calibration sample were assigned correctly to their type of substance abuse (i.e., the hit rate was 90.0%). The 5 items that most saliently differentiated between the women were representative of future time perspective and achievement. The alcoholic women believed that they might be happier in the future and accomplish more than the heroin-addicted women.