The presented study utilized data from the final assessment from COGA’s prospective study, and therefore inferences regarding causal relationships between trauma, planning/problem‐solving aspects of executive functioning, and DSM‐IV PTSD and alcohol dependence diagnoses cannot be determined. Further, since the data used were across four potential interviews, it is possible that PTSD and alcohol dependence symptoms appeared several years apart from each other or may have not appeared yet in the individual. Future work should expand on these findings by examining temporality of PTSD and alcohol dependence in a longitudinal framework. While a nonresponse analysis indicated that individuals who did not return for follow‐up in this study showed no differences regarding sex, race/ethnicity, sexual trauma exposure, or TOLT measures, attrition may have impacted this study's findings. Therefore, this study only included participants with data from baseline to follow‐up 3 to allow for the greatest proportion of nonmissing data for the analyses. In addition, the SSAGA interview only asks the participants about the first traumatic exposure experience for each traumatic exposure. Therefore, this study did not account for recurrent exposure to trauma.
