Certain issues should be considered when interpreting these results. First, retrospective self-reports of childhood maltreatment may be underestimates; yet, such measures are generally viewed as valid, provided that questions are clear (45). Retrospective self-report measures are less susceptible to underestimation than court records (which only detect individuals who have gone through the legal system due to maltreatment), and are more feasible than prospective studies. Second, data were only available to assess three-year course of substance dependence, prohibiting consideration of longer-term outcomes over participants’ lifetimes. However, this dataset was chosen because it is from a large, methodologically strong, nationally representative study, which has made it a valuable resource for persistence research (21, 22). Third, despite the large overall sample size, relatively few alcohol dependent participants (7.83%) reported emotional neglect; analyses of the effect of emotional neglect on alcohol persistence may have thus had lower power, making it more difficult to detect true small effects. However, null findings for nicotine persistence do not appear to be due to low power, given the larger sample size and low adjusted odds ratio magnitude. Fourth,
