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Cross-lagged Panel Analysis of Alcoholics’ Anonymous Effects on Drinking
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Evaluation studies consistently report correlations between Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) participation and less drinking or abstinence. Randomization of alcoholics to AA or non-AA is impractical and difficult. Unfortunately, non-randomization studies are susceptible to artifacts due to endogeneity bias, where variables assumed to be exogenous (“independent variables”) may actually be endogenous (“dependent variables”). A common artifact is reverse causation, where reduced drinking leads to increased AA participation, the opposite of what is typically assumed. The presentation focuses on a secondary analysis of a national alcoholism treatment data set, Project MATCH, that consists of multi-wave data on AA participation and severity of drinking over a 15 month period. An autoregressive cross-lagged model was formulated and indicated the predominance of AA effects on reduction of drinking, not the reverse. The presentation will be accessible to evaluators without advanced statistical training. |
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