1 New screening tools for early identification of alcohol abuse risk in the military 1 Paul T. Bartone,* + Jarle Eid, + Sigurd W. Hystad, + Jon C. Laberg, + Einar Borud, + Kathleen Jocoy* & Bjorn H. Johnsen + * Center for Technology & National Security Policy, National Defense University + Department of Psychosocial Science, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway Abstract Alcohol abuse is often a serious problem in military organizations. In this study, (low) psychological hardiness and (high) avoidance coping predict increased risk of alcohol abuse in US soldiers returning from overseas deployment, and also in Norwegian military personnel recently deployed. These results can be used to inform more effective alcohol screening programs. Introduction A major problem facing military personnel and veterans is alcohol abuse. Abuse of alcohol is devastating to individual lives, while driving up health care costs and degrading the readiness of military forces. In addition, alcohol and substance abuse contribute to a range of other negative outcomes including depression, family violence and suicide. Research is needed to improve screening methods for early identification of soldiers who may be at risk for stress-related alcohol problems. Effective screening is essential in order to target preventive assistance to those who need it most. Current screening tools used in the Department of Defense Post Deployment Health Assessment (PDHA) are not sufficiently sensitive, failing to identify many at-risk soldiers. These tools, which ask directly about recent drinking behavior, yield multiple false-negatives because: (1) troops tend to minimize or deny drinking problems for fear of negative repercussions; (2) many young troops with a drinking problem fail to recognize it as such; and (3) access to alcohol is restricted in theater, so those prone to alcohol abuse have no problem behavior to report when they return from deployment. Thus, screening tools that rely on direct questions about drinking behaviors may fail to identify many potential problem drinkers. On the other hand indirect measures, which assess personal factors associated with alcohol risk are not vulnerable to these same validity problems. The present research evaluates psychological hardiness as a potential marker for alcohol abuse risk in military personnel. Hardiness is a trait-like tendency composed of commitment, control and challenge. Harrdiness has been found in many studies to distinguish people who remain healthy under stress from those who develop various health and performance problems (Bartone, 1999). Hardiness is also strongly linked to avoidance coping style, the tendency to avoid problems in life rather 1 Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Prevention Research, Washington DC, May 2014