Differential drinking patterns, personality characteristics, and Field articulation of court-referred and non-court-referred male alcoholics in treatment

Male alcoholics in an inpatient rehabilitation program were selected to investigate differential characteristics of court-referred patients on measures of personality, drinking style, demographics, and cognitive style. Seventy-eight males were separated into two groups based upon the demographic dimension of whether or not the patient was in treatment primarily as a result of legal pressures imposed due to an alcohol-related motor vehicle violation (N = 23) or in treatment for a variety of personal/nonlegal reasons (N = 57). All subjects were administered the Clinical Analysis Questionnaire (CAQ), the Alcohol Use Inventory (AUI), and the Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT). There were no differences found on any of the personality or demographic measures. There were significant differences between the legal and nonlegal groups on 11 of the 20 AUI scales. The legal group tended to be more field dependent than the nonlegal group as measured by the GEFT. The legal group does not appear to suffer as severely from the effects of alcohol as does the nonlegal group and may be in an earlier stage of problem drinking.