Unitary alcoholism factor and its personality correlates.

A 135-item alcohol behavior questionnaire and the short-form Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory were administered to 160 new admissions to a state hospital. The alcohol questionnaire was constructed with substantial item redundancy so that specific factors could be defined if they exist. Factor analysis of the 135 items revealed one large alcoholism factor plus 10 small specific factors that are not essential features of alcoholism. A principal components analysis of the 42 items most highly related to the single major alcoholism factor provided scoring weights. Item analysis techniques were used to identify the MMPI items which were most discriminating between patients with high and low alcohol-abuse scores. Forty-nine MMPI items were found to relate highly to the alcohol-abuse factor scores. The 49 items were found to contribute most to scoring of Hs, D, Hy, and Pt clinical scales, while the contribution to Pd was substantially lower. While there is justified interest in identifying differences in patterns of alcohol abuse among alcoholics (Horn & Wanberg, 1969), there is a