MOREAN, CORBIN, AND TREAT 287 Differences in Subjective Response toAlcohol by Gender, Family History, Heavy Episodic Drinking, and Cigarette Use: Refining and Broadening the Scope of Measurement

ABSTRACT. Objective: Subjective response to alcohol (SR) has been shown to differ by gender, family history of alcoholism, drinking status, and cigarette smoking status. However, the requisite statistical basis for making mean-level comparisons (scalar measurement invariance; MI) has not been established for any SR measure, making it impossible to determine whether observed differences reflect true differences or measurement bias. Secondary data analyses were conducted to evaluate (a) MI of the Subjective Effects of Alcohol Scale (SEAS) by gender, family history, heavy drinking status, and cigarette smoking status us-ing multigroup confirmatory factor analysis; and (b) the impact of these group-level variables on SR using multivariate general linear model-ing. A central strength, the SEAS assesses novel high arousal negative (HIGH−; e.g., aggressive) and low arousal positive effects (LOW+; e.g., relaxed) in addition to commonly assessed high arousal positive [HIGH+; e.g., sociable] and low arousal negative effects [LOW−; e.g.