RISK AND COPING IN CHILDREN OF ALCOHOLICS

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DESCRIPTION: (Applicant's Abstract) The proposed research would continue an ongoing 10 year long prospective study that is following male and female children of alcoholics, both biological parents, a custodial step-parent where present, and an ecologically comparable but nonalcoholic group of control families at 3 year intervals. The project's long term goal is to describe the development of risk aggregation and dilution from early childhood at least into early adulthood, with a special focus on risk factors contributing to the development of alcohol abuse, dependence, and other drug involvement. Variation in individual and contextual factors that may be protective against such outcomes is also of special interest. Variation in level of antisocial comorbidity among the alcoholic parents makes it likely that findings will be able to address issues of heterogeneity of outcome among children of alcoholics. The study began when children were largely of preschool age, and findings to date have been confirmatory of the original hypotheses relating to differences in emergence of externalizing and internalizing behavior, as well as rudimentary alcohol expectancy schema in higher vs. lower risk children. Familial risk differences relating to paternal alcoholism subtype functioned as an effective marker of risk aggregation. Families with antisocial comorbidity had the greatest aggregation of risk. Parental recovery status was associated with differences in outcome among the girls during early to middle childhood. The current program would supplement the original sample of 311 families with an addition of a second sample of 250 families that would facilitate the delineation of risk development among girls, and allow better characterization of possible gender differences. An added yearly assessment protocol, during the child age range 11-17, will permit better delineation of onset phenomena during the time when change is most likely to occur. Outcomes will be tracked as Sample 1 boys move through middle childhood and into early adolescence, as Sample II children move through early childhood and school entry, and as the parents move into middle adulthood. For boys, onset of alcohol and other drug involvement and the emergence of some alcohol related problems is expected for a substantial subgroup and models will be constructed linking onset to other concurrent risk attributes (e.g., school, perceived peer environment), and to measures of early child, familial, and contextual risk. For girls, analyses will focus on individual and contextual factors that facilitate cumulation of risk or its dilution during this period. A special interest is the role of familial subtype as a mediator of child risk variation. The study has shown substantial risk related differences in early childhood, and findings from the continuation project should also have direct relevance for preventive intervention programming.