role of alcohol-related cognition on the development and escalation of alcohol use
Most people who are convicted of driving under the influence (DUI) in the United States are repeat offenders. As a result, many research studies have been conducted to find out specific factors affecting DUI recidivism. However, most of the studies have focused on the drinking habits as well as drinking-related problems of the repeat offenders leaving specific research gaps. Miller & Fillmore’s (2014) research study sought to bridge this gap by establishing the role of alcohol-related cognition on the development and escalation of alcohol use.
The researchers established whether temptation to drink, using Cognitive and Emotional Preoccupation scale (CEP), and attention bias influence the initiation and escalation of drinking using three groups of participants of size 20. The first group comprised of recidivists DUI offenders who have been convicted at least twice. The second group consists of first-time offenders, while the third group, a control group comprised of people with no history of DUI offense. The researchers hypothesized that recidivist offenders are characterized by heightened attentional bias to alcohol cues and greater emotional preoccupation than the other two groups. It was established in this study that recidivist offenders display increased alcohol attentional bias and greater emotional preoccupation with alcohol than the other two groups.
The researchers used two statistical analysis methods: One-way analyses of variance (ANOVA) to determine the group difference and paired sample t-test to compare the fixation times on alcohol-related images. Using the data presented by the researchers, two additional analyses could be done. First, an independent sample t-test could be run to compare the means of the three sample groups. Secondly, a Chi-Square test could be used to determine the difference between the two categorical variables. The information provided by the researchers is sufficient to perform a similar research study.