The strenghs of our study are the relatively large sample size and the completeness of the data describing individual antisocial behaviors and their occurrence over time. To our knowledge it is one of the first studies to describe the clinical course of ASPD and AASB in both men and women and in three racial groups. One limitation of the studies is that they were conducted on a select sample of European Americans, African Americans and American Indians and do not represent a random sample therefore prevalence rates of the disorders may not accurately reflect national averages. The data are from one group of American Indians and are not necessarily representative of all American Indians, or even all individuals within these populations. The study also gathered data on the course of antisocial behaviors using retrospective methods and may be subject to historical cohort effects that may not be in effect in future studies. Replications of our findings using longitudinal methods will be necessary to validate them and thus we cannot make any assumptions about their generalization to other samples. Never the less this report represents an important first step in understanding the clinical course of antisocial behaviors in understudied racial groups.
