Personality Development Collaborative

Since 1985, the Michigan Longitudinal Study (MLS) has yielded invaluable information about the causes of substance abuse by following a large group of individuals from early childhood into early adulthood, and their biological parents from early adulthood into late middle age. The MLS is the world’s longest-running high-risk study on the development of substance abuse, and involves more than 2,200 individuals in over 460 families. Recently, the study yielded the first-ever evidence that specific indicators in early childhood can predict an adult’s likelihood of being diagnosed with alcoholism, a finding that is only possible because the study has tracked the life course of a generation of children, including children of alcoholics, and a comparison group from families without a history of alcoholism. A third generation is now being studied: the children of the people who were small children when the study began. It has been funded continuously since 1987 by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, part of the National Institutes of Health. With an annual budget of $2.5 million, it involves more than a dozen scientists, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, and around 50 staff members.

Principal Investigator(s): Dr. Robert A. Zucker