My students and I conduct work in three areas: risk for alcoholism, risk for eating disorders, and clinical assessment methodology (to go to the lab webpage click here):

Risk for Alcoholism
Our current work focuses on developing and testing a model of risk that integrates personality trait theory with psychosocial learning theory. The idea is that trait disinhibition biases the learning process, to lead to the formation of overly positive expectancies for the benefits of drinking. To date, we have shown that expectancies predict the onset of adolescent drinking and the onset of problem drinking. We have also shown that expectancies appear to mediate the influence of disinhibition on drinking.

Risk for Eating Disorders
In recent years, we have developed measures to assess expectancies for the benefits of eating and of dieting/thinness. We have shown that they correlate strongly with symptom endorsement and that they predict symptom endorsement longitudinally. We are currently integrating that psychosocial learning work with personality trait risk factors, much as with alcoholism, but that work has not yet been published.

Clinical Assessment Methodology
My students and I periodically make contributions to the basic assessment literature, with methodological papers on various topics.

Risk for Alcoholism

• Smith, G. T., Goldman, M. S., Greenbaum. P., & Christiansen, B. A. (1995). The expectancy for social facilitation from drinking: the divergent paths of high-expectancy and low-expectancy adolescents. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 104, 32-40.
• McCarthy, D. M., Kroll, L. S., & Smith, G. T. (2001). Integrating Disinhibition and Learning Risk for Alcohol Use. Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, 9, 389-398.

Risk for Eating Disorders

• Hohlstein, L. A., Smith, G. T., & Atlas, J. A. (1998).  An Application of Expectancy Theory to Eating Disorders: Development and Validation of Measures of Eating and Dieting Expectancies. Psychological Assessment, 10, 49-58.
• Simmons, J. R., Smith, G. T., Hill, K. K. (2002). Validation of Eating and Dieting Expectancy Measures in Two Adolescent Samples. The International Journal of Eating Disorders, 31, 461-473.

Clinical Assessment Methodology

• Smith, G. T., & McCarthy, D. M. (1995). Methodological considerations in the refinement of clinical assessment instruments. Psychological Assessment, 7, 300-308.
• Smith, G. T., McCarthy D. M., & Anderson, K. (1998). On the sins of short form development. Psychological Assessment, 10, 49-58.