Taken together, these analyses indicate advantages as well as disadvantages related to including craving as an additional criterion in the DSM. Advantages of craving are four-fold. First, craving forms part of a unidemensional construct with the other DSM-IV criteria, indicating that craving taps into the same underlying latent construct (conceptualized here as an alcohol use disorder continuum) as existing criteria. Second, the addition of craving improves the overall fit of the criteria to a general population sample, indicating that a diagnostic set with craving better captures the full range of alcohol problems in the general population compared to a diagnosis without craving. Third, the addition of craving increases the total discriminatory ability of the set of criteria as a whole. This indicates that craving is highly related to the alcohol use disorder continuum, and that a diagnosis with craving can better distinguish individuals with and without alcohol problems. Finally, craving is associated with several risk factors among individuals with DSM-IV diagnosed alcohol dependence, including younger age of dependence onset, prior to past year alcohol dependence (suggesting a chronic course), and
