Measuring How People Control the Amounts of Substances They Use

Abstract

A new measure—control style—is presented as an alternative approach to measuring drug use in an effort to avoid the many limitations of existing methods. Control style and a traditional number of occasions of use measure are compared in their relationship to two dependent variables—drug dependency and drug problems. Results of a large, random household survey investigating individuals' use of many substances show that 1) responses on the control style measure are consistent and related to other measures in a meaningful way; 2) control style is more strongly associated with drug problems than is number of occasions, but the reverse holds for drug dependency, and the pattern varies with the particular substance; and 3) there is little overlap between the two measure in accounting for variation in drug problems and dependency. Thus, control style appears to be an important new tool for measuring drug use.