One way of identifying at-risk youth is to posit the existence of distinct developmental trajectories, only some of which lead to problematic alcohol use. Two different approaches are used to identify these trajectories: the rationally-constructed approach and the statistically-acquired approach. The rationally-constructed approach relies on experts who propose distinct developmental trajectories based on patterns drawn from the research literature or their own clinical experiences. Well-known examples include Cloninger’s types (Type I Alcoholism/milieu-limited and Type II Alcoholism/male-limited) and Zucker’s types (Antisocial Alcoholism, Developmentally Cumulative Alcoholism, Developmentally Limited Alcoholism, and Negative Affect Alcoholism).4,5 A more recent example is a study by Hicks et al., who split a sample of young men into four rationally-constructed groups: (1) individuals with at least 2 alcohol use disorder (AUD) symptoms at age 17, “adolescent onset”; (2) individuals with at least 2 AUD symptoms at either age 20 or 24, “early adult onset”; (3) individuals with at least 2 AUD symptoms at age 29 and one previous age, “persistent course”; and (4) individuals with 0 AUD symptoms at age 29 but at least 2 AUD symptoms at
