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On method, theory, and the classification of complex disorders
Author(s) -
Zucker Robert A.
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
addiction
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.424
H-Index - 193
eISSN - 1360-0443
pISSN - 0965-2140
DOI - 10.1111/j.1360-0443.1997.tb02886.x
Subject(s) - context (archaeology) , suite , library science , psychology , citation , coping (psychology) , psychiatry , history , political science , computer science , law , archaeology
Modem statistical techniques, including a variety of multi-dimensional scaling strategies, are only beginning to be exploited in the alcohol field (McArdle, Hamagami & Hulick, 1994; Muthen, 1997). They offer a promise for greater clarity in sorting out what has increasingly been characterized as a set of disorders rather than a single entity (Babor et al., 1994). Dr Peters paper (Peters, 1997) is in this tradition, and makes use of non-metric multi-dimensional scaling with a consecutive series of 277 inand outpatients, involving approximately 40% of women and comprising 91% of the clients voluntarily seeking treatment for alcohol problems in the Amsterdam health region. Results generally are confirmatory of the dimensional integrity of the alcohol dependence syndrome (although, interestingly, increased tolerance does not load on this dimension); they also yield an antisociality dimension whose prototype cluster is heavily male at one pole, and heavily female at the antipole, and an "agedness" dimension that is marked by chronicity at one pole and what appears to be young antisocial alcoholism (characterized by the author as a "quarrelling youngsters" antipole) at the other. The author appropriately notes that the antipole of the second dimension needs better characterization, and that the third one is better described as "a composition of two opposing prototypes where age is a likely connecting factor", rather than as a genuine dimension.