Alcoholism On Family Research Paper

Alcoholism is considered a family illness because alcoholism, much like other addictions, creates consequences for the entire family. The effect of alcoholism on families is an important issue that needs to be studied because it is so prevalent in our society. In fact, an estimated 43% of all United States adults have been affected by alcoholism in their family in some way, whether through a parent, spouse, sibling, or other blood relative. Furthermore, according to the National Institutes of Health, more than 10 percent of U.S. children live with a parent who has an issue with alcohol. Because the rate of children affected by alcoholism in their own homes is so high, it is imperative for us to understand the outcomes of an alcoholic environment …show more content…
Each longitudinal study focused on a different stage of life; The Michigan Longitudinal Study (MLS) focused on early childhood, the Adolescent/Adult Family Development Project (AFDP) on early adolescence, and lastly the Alcohol and Health Behavior Project (AHBP) focused on early adulthood. Each longitudinal study had a slightly different research method used to collect the data. The design of the MLS study was through the recruitment of alcoholic families, which were identified by community canvassing, and/or a father’s court or arrest records. Mothers and fathers who participated in the study completed four different assessments based on three-year intervals of their young child’s life. Similar to the MLS, the AFDP was also a community-based sample and alcoholic parents were identified through court records, but also through insurance (HMO) questionnaires, as well as telephone surveys. For this study, data was collected for three consecutive years from mothers, fathers, and one child from the family, and then twice more at five year intervals as a follow-up. Lastly, the AHBP sample was recruited through a screening of 3156 freshmen at the University of Michigan about parental drinking. Data was collected in annual assessments from those selected for the study from their freshmen through their senior year, …show more content…
I believe a great strength of the study was leveraging the three longitudinal studies. Doing this was not only was efficient, since longitudinal studies take a long time to complete, but it also gave a greater sample size to support their hypothesis. However, using the three longitudinal studies could also be seen as a limitation, because the data was slightly disjointed, since it focused on different age groups living in different communities. In addition to the disjointed samples, different assessments were used in each of the three studies and the sample characteristics were slightly different. These limitations could possibly account for the reason why their full hypothesis was not supported. The aspect of their hypothesis that was not supported was that during adolescence COAs experience the greatest amount of stressors from peer influences and that during early adulthood they experience stressors mainly from independent functioning, however during all points of life the study showed that COAs experience the greatest amount of stress from family events. While during early adulthood, data supported that family and independent functioning related stressors concurrently dominate, there was not enough data in the sample to support the claim that there is a greater focus on peer-related stressors during early