QUANTITATIVE METHODS IN ALCOHOL RESEARCH

这个独立科学家奖（K 02）应用程序的目的是 支持发展先进定量方法的专业知识， 这将适用于NIAAA资助的研究领域， 行为药理学和精神病学分类学。 的两个区域 研究旨在了解酒精的发展 青春期和青年期的问题。 申请人已 生产力，获得独立的资金，并建立了合作 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， 具体的量化程序。量化技能领域 选择发展的依据是它们解决重要问题的能力， 理论和概念问题的方式，传统的统计 技术不能。申请人将获得强大的专业知识 与精神病学分类学相关的技术，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）分类学MAXCOV-HITMAX。 在青少年和成人数据中， 集，这些方法将被用来对比现有的 系统，如DSM-IV和ICD-10，具有新的诊断模型 和酒精使用障碍的分类。 在这种发展模式中， 滥用和依赖性诊断代表了轻度和重度 相同的核心成瘾结构的表现。 在申请人 行为药理学研究，数学建模技术 从心理物理学将被用来表征时间动态主音， 对酒精反应的阶段性成分，对血液敏感 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 对酒精的耐受性。 据预测，与对照组相比， 有酗酒家族史的成年人会对 酒精主要是阶段性的。 该奖项将使 申请人保护时间，以维持酒精的方案线 研究，并将最大限度地提高他的科学贡献的质量 长期来看

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.