Empirical Groupings of Perceptions of Alcohol Use Among Alcohol Dependent Persons: A Cluster Analysis of the Alcohol Use Inventory (AUI) Scales.

Scales of the Alcohol Use Inventory (AUI) for 217 consecutive admissions (174 men, 43 women; 178 white, 39 black) to a substance abuse treatment program were cluster analyzed to empirically identify patterns of subjective perceptions regarding benefits of use, deleterious consequences of use, and styles of use. Five groupings emerged which were cross-validated by randomly splitting the total sample in half and applying the K-Means procedure to each half. Differences among these groups were found on age, education, and the personality and symptom scales of the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-II (MCMI-II). The implications of these clusters for understanding and treating alcohol abuse/dependence are discussed.