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In recent years, trajectory approaches to characterizing individual differences in the onset and course of substance involvement have gained popularity. Previous studies have sometimes reported 4 prototypic courses:(a) a consistently “low” group,(b) an “increase” group,(c) a “decrease” group, and (d) a consistently “high” group. Although not always recovered, these trajectories are often found, despite these studies varying in the ages of the samples studied and the duration of the observation periods employed. Here, the authors examined the consistency with which these longitudinal patterns of heavy drinking were recovered in a series of latent class growth analyses that systematically varied the age of the sample at baseline, the duration of observation, and the number and frequency of measurement occasions. Data were drawn from a 4-year, 8-wave panel study of college student drinking (N= 3,720). Despite …