Demographic effects on the Trail Making test in alcohol abusers.

Demographic effects on the Trail Making Test (TMT), a test often used for screening for cognitive impairment, are examined in a sample of alcohol abusers in drug abuse treatment programs. A sample was drawn from electronic files of data from the Drug Abuse Treatment outcome Study (DATOS). The DATOS was a naturalistic, prospective cohort study that collected data from 1991-1993 in 96 programs in 11 cities in the United States. The number of alcohol abuser's scores available for analysis was 1000. Data were analyzed to determine the effects of gender, ethnicity, age and education variables on the two parts of the TMT in this large treatment sample of alcohol abusers. The variables of age, ethnicity and education were statistically significant for both parts A and B of the TMT. R-Square values for overall models were quite weak (A = .12, B = .14) suggesting that demographic effects on the TMT, while clearly present, account for relatively little overall variance in terms of alcohol abuser's TMT performance. These results are consistent with earlier research using a more heterogenous drug abuse treatment sample.