On the possibility of the psychometric detection of persons who are prone to the abuse of alcohol and other substances

Abstract

Abstract A summary of the literature containing the scores of male alcohol abusers and drug abusers on the MAC Scale (a 49-item MMPI-derived scale which was constructed to differentiate male alcohol abusers from nonsubstance-abusing male psychiatric outpatients) indicated that the memebers of these two subclasses of substance abusers were similar in certain psychometrically detectable respects which were stable over time, independent of both the immediate sequelae and the longer term consequences of substance abuse per se, and at least modestly predictive of subsequent substance abuse. In the present study, the MAC Scale succeeded in differentiating youthful male alcohol-related offenders (N = 91) from similarly aged nonsubstance-abusing male psychiatric outpatients (N = 48) and college students (N = 79) with an accuracy rate of 82.1%. The average scores of the present sample of youthful alcohol-related offenders and the scale's standardization group of adult alcohol abusers were found to be indistinguishable, as were the average scores of the parallel samples of youthful and adult nonsubstance-abusing psychiatric outpatients. Since the MAC Scale was not developed for the purpose of early identification, it was suggested that a scale developed for this specific purpose and free from dependence on the MMPI's item pool would almost certainly produce an appreciably more powerful early detection instrument.