The purpose of this study was, therefore, to examine the clustering of all 11 AUD criteria and PTSD symptom clusters B (re-experiencing), C (avoidance/numbing), and D (hyperarousal), and to characterize the resultant latent classes in terms of demographics, drinking behaviors, and specific traumas experienced—e.g., physical violence, sexual violence, and non-assaultive trauma. We hypothesized that classes would be differentiated by type and severity of AUD symptoms as well as type and severity of PTS symptoms. We hypothesized that the high alcohol/low PTS severity group would be mostly male and comprised of physical trauma victims (due to males’ higher likelihood of physical assault victimization than females in the data source used for this analysis [Bender et al., 2020]), lower prevalence of PTSD compared to females (Tolin & Foa, 2006), and greater propensity to use alcohol as an enhancing mechanism (Lehavot et al., 2014)—that is, problematic alcohol use as an externalizing behavior. We hypothesized that there would be a mostly female high PTS/low alcohol group comprised of sexual trauma and non-assaultive trauma victims (due to greater number of females experiencing both sexual assault
