The collaborative study on the genetics of alcoholism (COGA) was designed to identify risk and protective genes for alcohol use disorders and related conditions, with additional objectives to study associations with environmental and neurophysiological factors and their interplay with genes. 1 , 2 , 3 COGA has collected a wealth of data on nearly 18,000 individuals over the past 30 years, creating a national resource for studying the onset, offset, and developmental course of alcohol use disorders and related conditions. COGA data and all assessment instruments are made freely available to the scientific community (details at cogastudy.org). In this paper, we describe how data collection has evolved across the COGA project (Part 1), as well as key areas of investigation and findings that have emerged from the COGA project (Part 2), in the hope of inspiring additional scientists to collaborate and work with this rich dataset.
