ABSTRACT
During the fall of 1979 three social work officers surveyed the entire enrollment of the advanced Army Medical Department (AMEDD) officer career course. The enrollees represented a wide range of medical specialties and years of military experience. Two questions were posed: Do medical officers enter service with conservative attitudes toward drug and alcohol substance use, or is their conservatism a product of having worked in the military system for years? And to what extent is the Stoessel Drug Attitude Inventory a reliable and valid instrument for application within this military population? This study reports the responses of 64 Army Medical Department officers to 25 items. No meaningful differences were found with respect to scale scores for the basic groups and those for the advanced group, and only a single item revealed differences between groups at the .05 level of confidence.
