Abstract
Demographic effects on the Trail Making test (TMT), a test often used to screen for cognitive impairment, were examined in a sample of sedatives abusers in drug abuse treatment programs. A sample was drawn from electronic files of data from the Drug Abuse Treatment Outcome Study (DATOS). The DATOS was a naturalistic, prospective cohort study that collected data from 1991-1993 in 96 programs in 11 cities in the United States. The number of sedatives abusers' scores available for analysis were 72. Data were analyzed to determine the effects of sex, ethnicity, age, and education variables on the two parts of the TMT in this large treatment sample of sedatives abusers. None of the demographic variables were statistically significantly related to TMT parts A and B, when considered as single variables. In addition, R-Square values for overall models were low (A =. 15, B =. 18) suggesting that demographic effects on the TMT in a sample of sedative abusers are very weak.