Behind the Bottle: Exploring Family History in Alcoholism Development

Faculty Sponsor: Valerie L. Nazzaro

Live Poster Session: Zoom Link

Tina Huang

Tina Huang is a senior student (’24) majoring in History and Biology at Wesleyan University. She is focusing on the relationship between individual drinking problems and their family alcoholism history for this project.

Abstract: Numerous studies established that individuals with a family history of alcoholism are more prone to developing alcohol dependence, highlighting the influence of family alcoholism history on individual drinking behavior. Research on US Hispanic families indicates that familial history of alcoholism exerts a stronger impact on women compared to men (Chartier et al., 2017). This project uses the NESARC dataset as a data source and investigates whether a similar observation can be made in the U.S. population. Our findings suggest that females overall have a less probability of developing alcohol-related issues than males when all other factors are held equal. However, they seem to be more influenced by a familial history of alcoholism.

QAC-201-Project-Poster_Final-Yuting-Huang.R