RELIGIOUS COPING AS A MODERATOR OF THE FIVE FACTOR MODEL OF PERSONALITY TRAITS AND ALCOHOL ABUSE SEVERITY AT SIX-MONTH FOLLOW-UP IN A TWELVE STEP TREATMENT SAMPLE

Personality traits and religious coping are often viewed by counseling psychologists as strengths that influence how difficult situations are handled. Within the substance abuse literature, both personality traits and religious coping style are proposed to have profound impacts on substance abuse and treatment outcomes. The success of Twelve Step treatment programs is predicated on the notion that treatment works by affecting both “positive ” personality changes and use of positive religious coping as means for decreasing substance abuse. However, virtually no empirical research exists to account for the impact of religious coping and personality on treatment outcomes. In contrast, a large literature base exists that examines the roles of personality on substance abuse and treatment outcomes. Because Twelve Step treatments utilize both personality traits and religious coping as means for decreasing substance abuse, an investigation of the unique and shared influence of these factors on treatment outcomes seems appropriate. In this dissertation, I examined the influence of personality factors (Revised NE