Longitudinal Studies in Personality and Substance Abuse

描述(由申请人提供)： 候选人要求通过这项有指导的研究科学家发展奖申请获得五年的支持，以获得进行物质使用障碍流行病学研究的深入经验，并促进他的职业生涯从基础生物分子研究过渡。具体地说，将研究药物滥用及其危险因素问题，特别强调人格特征。这项研究由三个独立但相关的项目组成：a.一项关于婴儿气质和推测相关的神经递质代谢物研究的九年随访。将对药物滥用的风险因素进行评估，并假设根据婴儿数据可以预测这些因素。这项研究将评估早期生命数据的预测能力。此外，还将评估儿童期中期人格与其他风险因素之间的重叠情况。在一项关于儿童人格的经典研究35-40年后，对一群成年人进行跟踪调查，该研究将评估儿童时期的人格特征对成年后药物滥用结果的预测有效性。这项前瞻性研究将量化人格在很长一段时间内预测药物使用结果的重要性。它还将作为一个更大的潜在项目的可行性研究，该项目将具有足够的统计能力来评估广泛的药物滥用行为及其与儿童个性的不同联系。对酒精中毒遗传学合作研究的数据进行分析，以确定父母滥用药物对子女人格的影响，并评估人格因素是遗传/家庭风险的关键组成部分的假设。这些分析将利用一项大型研究的现有数据，以更好地理解家庭药物滥用作为风险因素的作用。在短期内，原始项目的执行将为申请者提供以药物滥用为重点的流行病学调查的实际经验；对现有数据的分析将使量化技能得以继续发展。研究项目的执行计划与正式的课程和指导工作相一致。从长远来看，这份申请书中概述的活动将为候选人提供必要的知识和经验，使其成为一名独立资助的药物滥用研究人员，并将其生物学和流行病学培训结合起来。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The candidate requests five years of support through this Mentored Research Scientist Development Award application in order to gain in-depth experience conducting epidemiological studies of substance use disorders and to facilitate his career transition from basic biomolecular research. Specifically, issues in substance abuse and its risk factors will be studied with particular emphasis on personality traits. The research consists of three separate but related projects: a.) Nine-year follow-up of a study of infant temperament and putatively associated neurotransmitter metabolites. Risk factors for substance abuse will be assessed and are hypothesized to be predictable from infancy data. This study will evaluate the predictive capacity of early life data. Additionally, the overlap between personality and other risk factors in mid-childhood will be evaluated, b.) Follow-up of a cohort of adults, 35-40 years after their participation in a classical study on childhood personality, that will evaluate the predictive validity of personality traits in childhood for substance abuse outcomes in adulthood. This prospective study will quantitate the importance of personality in predicting substance use outcomes over a very long time period. It will also serve as a feasibility study for a larger potential project that would have adequate statistical power for assessment of a broad spectrum of drug abuse behaviors and their differential association with childhood personality, c.) Analysis of data from the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism to determine the effect of parental substance abuse on offspring personality and evaluate the hypothesis that personality factors are key components of genetic/familial risk. These analyses will take advantage of existing data from a large study to better understand the role of familial substance abuse as a risk factor. In the short term, execution of original projects will provide the applicant with practical experience in epidemiological investigation focused on substance abuse; analysis of existing data will enable continued development of quantitative skills. Execution of research projects is planned to coincide with formal coursework and mentoring. In the long term, activities outlined in this application will provide the candidate with the necessary knowledge and experience on which to build a career as an independently funded substance abuse researcher and to integrate his biological and epidemiological training.