A final cautionary note concerns the research sample used in the analyses described in this article. Although the sample is large and diverse with a high proportion of women, and the results are consistent with those from other studies, the profiles that have emerged probably reflect the characteristics used to define the typology as well as the effect of data artifacts such as age. For example, abuse of drugs other than alcohol was more characteristic of younger adults at the time the data were collected, and this pattern may be reflected in the four-group subtype formulation presented here. This result was replicated 15 years later using a large data set from a multisite collaborative study of the genetics of alcoholism (Bucholz et al. in press). Such findings suggest that investigators must be sensitive to contextual factors—such as alcohol use among different age or cultural groups—that may influence the characteristics of particular subtypes obtained in research and that may, in turn, have implications for prevention and treatment efforts. Further research in the typology field will both illuminate such technical pitfalls and uncover the characteristics that most accurately distinguish types of alcoholics from one another.
