Little research has focused on African-American female drug abusers, particularly crack cocaine users. However, the identification of meaningful subgroups of drug abusers, particularly minority women, is important both clinically and because of their overrepresentation in the epidemiological data on crack cocaine use in many cities. The research used factor analysis and cluster analysis procedures to classify the participants into subgroups across relevant clinical, behavioral, and background concerns relevant to studying drug abusers. Results revealed five conceptually meaningful subgroups that classified women across indicators such as HIV sex risk factors, personality traits/Axis II dimensions, clinical syndromes, psychological symptomatology, lifetime and recent drug and alcohol use, prior physical and sexual abuse, and social context variables such as parental addiction and living with a drug abuser. The analysis concluded that attempts to classify women into identifiable clinical subtypes are essential to inform treatment initiatives designed to serve this group more effectively and to inform prevention and community outreach intervention strategies to bring them into treatment. 24 references