QUANTITATIVE METHODS IN ALCOHOL RESEARCH

本独立科学家奖(K02)的申请旨在 支持发展先进的量化方法方面的专业知识， 它将应用于NIAAA资助的以下领域的研究 行为药理学和精神病学分类学。这两个领域 研究的目的是了解酒精的发展 青春期和青春期的问题。申请人已被 高效率，获得独立资金，并建立协作 这两个领域的关系。职业发展将包括 与酒精和药物研究人员合作，他们是 具体的定量程序。量化技能领域 选择发展是基于他们解决重要问题的能力 以传统统计学的方式解决理论和概念问题 技术不能。申请人将获得强大的专业知识 与精神分类相关的技术，包括生存-危险 分析、验证性工厂分析、项目反应理论和Meehl S(1995)分类群MAXCOV-HITMAX。在青少年和成人数据中 集合，这些方法将用来对比现有的有效性 具有新诊断模式的DSM-IV和ICD-10等系统 和酒精使用障碍的分类学。在这个发展模式中， 虐待和依赖的诊断更温和、更严重。 同样的核心成瘾结构的表现。在申请人中 S行为药理学研究，数学建模技术 将被用来描述时间动态的补药和 对血液敏感的酒精反应的时相成分 酒精水平和这些水平的变化率。 这些方法将与其他评估急性发作的方法进行比较。 对酒精的耐受性。据预测，与对照组相比，年轻的 有酗酒家族史的成年人会对 主要是阶段性的酒精。这一奖项将允许 申请者受保护的时间以维持计划中的酒精额度 研究，并将最大限度地提高其科学贡献的质量 从长远来看。

This Independent Scientist Award (K02) application is designed to support the development of expertise in advanced quantitative methods, which will be applied to NIAAA-funded research in the areas of behavioral pharmacology and psychiatric taxonomy. Both areas of research are directed at understanding the development of alcohol problems in adolescence and young adulthood. The applicant has been productive, obtained independent funding, and established collaborative relationships in both areas. Career development will include collaboration with alcohol and drug researchers who are expert in particular quantitative procedures. Areas of quantitative skill development were chosen based on their ability to address important theoretical and conceptual issues in ways that traditional statistical techniques cannot. The applicant will gain expertise in powerful techniques relevant to psychiatric taxonomy, including Survival-Hazard Analysis, Confirmatory Factory Analysis, Item Response Theory, and Meehl s (1995) taxonomic MAXCOV-HITMAX. In both adolescent and adult data sets, these methods will be used to contrast the validity of existing systems such as the DSM-IV and ICD-10 with a new model of the diagnosis and taxonomy of alcohol use disorders. In this developmental model, abuse and dependence diagnoses represent milder and more severe manifestations of the same core addiction constructs. In the applicant s behavioral pharmacology research, mathematical modeling techniques from psychophysics will be used to characterize time-dynamic tonic and phasic components of responses to alcohol, which are sensitive to blood alcohol levels and the rate of change in these levels, respectively. These methods will be compared with other methods of assessing acute tolerance to alcohol. It is predicted that compared to controls, young adults with a family of history of alcoholism will show responses to alcohol that are primarily phasic in nature. This award will allow the applicant protected time to sustain programmatic lines of alcohol research, and will maximize the quality of his scientific contributions over the long term.