Psychology ETDs

Publication Date

Summer 7-30-2024

Abstract

Recent work has examined the extent to which individuals seek alcohol to enhance positive experiences (reward drinking) or relieve aversive states (relief drinking). Although reward/relief drinking subgroups moderate response to two medications for alcohol use disorder (AUD), naltrexone and acamprosate, limitations of reward/relief drinking measures could hinder efforts to translate findings to clinical practice. This dissertation project aimed to validate a brief, practical measure of reward/relief drinking, the Reward and Relief Inventory of Drinking Situations (RR-IDS). Among 426 participants with AUD enrolled in a clinical trial of naltrexone and acamprosate (Study 1), we identified RR-IDS items free of bias across sex, age, and AUD severity and developed cutoff scores for reward/relief drinking subgroups that predicted pharmacotherapy response. Study 2 (N=65 individuals with heavy/harmful alcohol use) compared the psychometric properties of the RR-IDS to other reward/relief drinking measures and examined how well these measures predicted alcohol-related processes in daily life.

Degree Name

Psychology

Level of Degree

Doctoral

Department Name

Psychology

First Committee Member (Chair)

Katie Witkiewitz

Second Committee Member

Elizabeth Yeater

Third Committee Member

Matthew Pearson

Fourth Committee Member

Henry Kranzler

Language

English

Keywords

alcohol use disorder, precision medicine, naltrexone, acamprosate, reward drinking, relief drinking

Document Type

Dissertation

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