Finally, the large number of children and adolescents in the original sample will prove invaluable as these young people pass through the age of greatest risk for developing alcoholism. The value of the COGA data as a national resource for studies of alcoholism should increase with the re-interviews and with the development of new methods for both the determination and analysis of various genotypes. These efforts ultimately are expected to lead to the identification of genes that affect the risk for alcoholism and related phenotypes.
