Testing the progressive nature of alcoholism.

The authors employed a new data collection methodology to assess Jellinek's progressive model of alcoholism. Data were collected to explore whether (a) symptoms occurred in four distinct phases, one phase following another, as described by Jellinek's model; (b) the phase markers and the phases of the symptom progression follow one another as predicted in the Jellinek model; and (c) the sequence of each of the 46 individual symptoms is as described by a serial interpretation of Jellinek's model. The authors also compared male participants with female participants on the conditions described above.