title: An application of stepwise discriminant analysis to the characterization of military heroin dependents, illicit drug users, and psychiatric patients.
abstract: This application of stepwise discriminant analysis explores a way to structure skewed-sample interview data, discusses some implications of the results and the conceptual limitations of assumptions about deviancy, and suggests a focus for future studies of the complex phenomena of drug abuse. The methodology differs from previous reports in that it uses a constant probability level, letting the computational procedure determine the number of significant variables. It also provides a method of determining the "chance" level (the amount of correct classification when there are no differences between the groups) so that the observed correct classification values may be usefully interpreted.
mesh_terms: D003201:Computers; D006556:Heroin Dependence; D006801:Humans; D001523:Mental Disorders; D008887:Military Medicine; D011336:Probability; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012920:Social Behavior Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology*; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders; D014481:United States