Alcoholics Anonymous Study

In this article, the researchers studied the impact of Alcoholics Anonymous on sobriety and gender differences and extroversion in success of Alcoholics Anonymous. In Alcoholics Anonymous, women consist of one-third of the members (Krentzmen, Brower, Cranford, Bradley, & Robinson, 2012). Also, women tend to be more extroverted (Krentzmen et al., 2012). The researchers questioned if extroversion was the reason that women did better in Alcoholics Anonymous, attending more meetings and having longer rates of success (Krentzmen et al., 2012). AA includes group fellowship and working with mentors, both activities that extroverts would be more comfortable doing than introverts. Previous studies have showed that being outgoing is associated with staying in AA for more than one year (Krentzmen et al., 2012). The main research questions were if participation in AA was predictive of sobriety, the difference between women and men, and if this difference was a result of extroversion. Their hypothesis was that AA membership would be associated with more sobriety, that success rates would be higher for women, and that the

The original study concerned religious and spiritual changes in AA (Krentzman et al., 2012). The sample had an average age of 42 years and was 34.8% women. The researchers defined extroversion in terms of being “sociable, assertive, active, and talkative individuals who like people and prefer large gatherings and groups” (Krentzman et al., 2012, p. 47). Introverts were defined as having the opposite qualities. They also chose one year of sobriety as success because it is considered to be a point associated with continued sobriety (Krentzman et al., 2012). The researchers studied the data from this previous study and found relationships between variables, like gender and extroversion, and the probability of reaching a year of