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8
ISSUES OF ASSESSMENT, METHODOLOGY, AND RESEARCH DESIGN
Despite the practical difficulties of research involving persons with alcohol-related problems,
there have been some notable achievements in treatment evaluation in recent years. These
accomplishments include conceptual advances, new measurement techniques, the growing
sophistication of diagnostic procedures, and improved approaches to research design. In
addition to reviewing the opportunities associated with these accomplishments, this chapter
also discusses some of the major unresolved evaluation research Issues, such as who should
be assessed, what variables should be measured, and the validity of current procedures.
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN CONCEPTUALIZATION
There are three important conceptual advances relevant to the current status and future
conduct of research on the treatment of alcohol-related problems. These advances have
guided the development of new assessment procedures that promise to provide a more
sophisticated basis for measuring the underlying dynamics of alcohol dependence and its
treatment.
The first conceptual development is the description of alcohol dependence as a core
syndrome within a broader range of alcohol-related problems. In recent years, research on
the alcohol dependence syndrome (Edwards, 1986) has focused on a cluster of biological,
psychological, and behavioral elements that are believed to be at the core of pathological
alcohol-seeking behavior. With the development of new diagnostic criteria and assessment
instruments to measure the presence and severity of alcohol dependence (Rounsaville et
al., 1987; Robins et al., 1988), researchers are now in a much better position to evaluate
specific treatment interventions that focus on such concomitants of dependence as craving,
environmental precipitants, and biological vulnerability factors.
A second development in conceptualization has resulted in a distinction between alcohol
dependence-and alcohol-related disabilities. Whereas alcohol dependence is seen as a
coherent syndrome with signs and symptoms that tend to occur together and mutually
reinforce one another, alcohol-related disabilities are now considered to be a rather
heterogeneous set of physical, psychological, and social impairments that occur
independently of alcohol dependence. In research terms, this distinction means that the
assessment of alcoholism should focus both on the underlying dependence and on the
problems associated with it. It also means that alcohol-related problems that occur as a
result of heavy drinking in the absence of dependence are also the proper targets of
treatment prevention efforts. Finally, alcohol dependence is now being conceptualized and
measured not as an all-or-none phenomenon but as a continuum that ranges in severity
from mild to severe (Edwards, Arif, and Hodgson, 1981~.
A third advance in conceptualization concerns new developments in the way treatment
evaluation is viewed. Interest in treatment evaluation research has been increasing within
the alcohol field over the past 20 years. The dominant approach in both clinical practice
and treatment evaluation research has been to ask: Is treatment effective? Traditionally,
research has attempted to discover the Main effects" of different treatments relative to the
absence of treatment or exposure to some alternative treatment. A more sophisticated
model of treatment evaluation, known as the Matching hypothesis," has emerged recently
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in the fields of drug abuse, alcoholism, and psychotherapy (Luborsky and McLellan, 1981;
Moos and Finney, 1985; VandenBos, 1986~. This model, which is discussed in detail in
Chapter 11, places great demands on the skills, resources, and ingenuity of evaluation
researchers.
ADVANCES IN ASSESSMENT TECHNOLOGY
Significant advances have been made in the technology of assessment, which have led to the
development of new techniques for screening, diagnosis, and differential assessment. The
research opportunities associated with advances in diagnosis and other assessment areas are
discussed below. Screening is considered separately in Chapter 10.
Diagnosis
One of the most active areas of development since the last Institute of Medicine report
(IOM, 1980) on research opportunities in the alcohol field has been diagnosis, including
the tools for diagnostic assessment. The third edition of the American Psychiatric
Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III) (American
Psychiatric Association, 1980) was published the same year as the IOM report. DSM-III
had a major impact on diagnosis in the mental health field (Spitzer, Williams, and Skodol,
1983) and fostered further development of structured diagnostic interviews. Together,
~operational" diagnostic criteria and structured interviews based on those criteria have had
a profound effect on the way clinicians conceptualize and determine psychiatric diagnoses.
For example, it is now clear that unstructured clinical examinations have major limitations.
One problem is reliability among observers. The use of structured interviews has improved
the reliability of diagnoses and other clinical assessments in the alcohol field.
On the assumption that some types of information are best gathered by an interviewer, a
related issue concerns the degree of clinical expertise the interviewer should possess.
Recent research with non-clinically trained (lay) interviewers indicates that if the interview
is highly structured, accurate diagnostic information can be gathered by interviewers with
little~or no clinical experience (Coryell, Cloninger, and Reich, 1978; Helzer et al., 1981~.
Some of the commonly employed examinations that are structured enough to be used by
nonclinicians include the Diagnostic Interview Schedule (DIS) (Robins et al., 1981) and the
Psychiatric Diagnostic Interview (PDI) (Othmer, Powell, and Penick, 19801. These
instruments are essentially general diagnostic examinations. Three others that are designed
specifically to gather information about substance use are the Composite International
Diagnostic Interview, Substance Abuse Module (CIDI-SAM) (Robins et al., 1988), the
Addiction Severity Index (ASI) (McLellan et al., 1980), and the Comprehensive Drinker
Profile (Marlatt and Miller, 1984~.
Related to the development of diagnostic instruments has been a series of ongoing
programs of study within NIAAA, the American Psychiatric Association (APA), and the
World Health Organization (WHO). These programs have led to recommended revisions
in current diagnostic criteria in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-III-R) (APA,
1987), as well as in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) (WHO, 1988~.
They have also contributed to the development of new diagnostic instruments that are
capable of classifying people reliably and quickly, according to the severity of their alcohol
dependence (Robins et al., lam; Wing et al., in press). Moreover, advances in evaluation
,
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methodology (Meyer et al., 1985) have stimulated research in this area, and a number of
assessment procedures have been developed to measure the severity of alcohol dependence
(Stockwell, Murphy, and Hodgson, 1983; Skinner and Horn, 1984~. Research suggests that
the severity of dependence predicts cravings for alcohol and failure to control drinking
following relapse (Polich, Armor, and Braiker, 1981; Babor, Cooney, and Lauerman, 1987~.
Although farther research is called for, it appears that the dependence syndrome construct
has considerable promise for early detection, diagnosis, and treatment planning, at least
in the European and North American countries in which most of the research has been
conducted (Edwards, 1986~.
Nevertheless, the concept of the alcohol dependence syndrome has been criticized from a
number of points of view, and at present its scientific status as the basis for a worldwide
definition of alcohol dependence requires further study. A more systematic program of
research using cross-cultural comparative methods could provide useful information. To
the extent that consistency is found across disparate samples of alcoholics from different
cultures, the case for a core dependence syndrome would be strengthened, thereby
facilitating epidemiological research, international communication, and comparisons across
treatment evaluation studies.
The following issues and questions offer opportunities for research on diagnosis:
· What is the construct validity of the dependence syndrome concept used as the basis
for DSM-III-R and ICD-10? Research should be undertaken on the underlying assumptions
of the alcohol dependence syndrome construct, particularly with respect to the relative
separation of indicators of dependence from indicators of alcohol-related impairment.
Because clinicians are using the same criteria to diagnose all substance abuse disorders, it
is crucial to examine the commonalities and distinctions among psychoactive substances.
To what extent do differences in severity of dependence represent differences in the abuse
liability of different substances?
· Additional cross-cultural research would be useful to identify biobehavioral universals
of alcohol dependence. Such research should be encouraged in the context of any program
to revise international classification systems (e.g., the ICD-10~.
· What is the concordance between current (e.g., DSM-III) and proposed (e.g.,
DSM-III-R)~diagnostic systems, particularly in terms of interrater agreement and test-retest
reliability?
· What is the internal and external validity of the new criteria proposed in DSM-III-R
and ICD-10? Research should focus on predictive validity (assessing the clinical course of
individuals diagnosed according to different diagnostic systems) and diagnostic stability (the
persistence of diagnostic symptoms over different periods of the drinking career).
Differential Assessment
Differential assessment is the detailed evaluation of the patient's alcohol-use disorder in
terms of etiology, presenting symptoms, substance-use patterns, alcohol-related problems,
and other associated features. A variety of purposes can be served by the differential
assessment. First, it can help to explain the underlying causes of a disorder. Second, data
obtained by careful assessment can serge as both a baseline and a predictor of future
behavior. Finally, differential assessment is crucial to individualized treatment planning,
which is based on the identification of"matches" between patient characteristics or needs
and specific treatment interventions.
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There have been some notable advances in basic research that have begun to stimulate new
approaches to assessment and patient placement. Laboratory studies of craving,
psychological expectancies, and impaired control over drinking have helped to elucidate the
natural bases of alcohol dependence (Meyer et al., 1985~. With the development of
procedures to measure the severity of alcohol dependence, it may soon be possible to assign
patients to different types and intensities of treatment, based on their vulnerability to
readdiction and the suitability of different therapies for their treatment.
The application of psychological learning theory to the study of relapse (see Chapter 3) has
led to the development of specific assessment techniques that are designed to identify the
patient's susceptibility to relapse and to minimize the effects of brief lapses (slips) (Annie
and Davis, 1987~. One of the most promising areas of research related to the development
of new assessment procedures is the identification of alcoholic subtypes. For example, there
is some evidence to suggest that psychopathology and social instability are associated with
poor prognosis, and these types; of patients may warrant more individualized treatment
(Rounsaville et al., 1987~. In addition to structured diagnostic interviews (which allow
reliable classification of psychopathology), new approaches to subtyping by personality
variables and by other characteristics are being proposed (Cloninger, 1987~. Many of these
advances have been facilitated by the use of standardized assessment procedures that were
developed within other disciplines to measure behavior and symptoms often seen in
alcoholics. These techniques include procedures to measure cognitive functioning, affective
states, anxietr, depression, social skills, and drug use. Although these procedures appear
to be suitable for use with alcoholics, there is also a need to develop measurement
techniques that have been designed specifically for alcohol problems and that have been
validated by using appropriate patient samples.
A wide range of methods--including interviews, questionnaires, biological tests, performance
tests, and clinical examination procedures--has been employed to gather clinical data on
substance-use disorders. Clinical instruments vary along several dimensions (e.g., who
gathers the information, how detailed it must be), but most interviews rely on the
respondent as the main or sole informant. Self-administered instruments are also used; the
assumption behind them is that if they are worded carefully enough and the amount of
information needed is not lengthy, it is possible to bypass an interviewer altogether. Some
commonly used questionnaires include the Michigan Alcoholism Screening Test (MAST)
(Hedlund and Vieweg, 1984), the Alcohol Expectancy Questionnaire (Brown et al., 1980),
the Alcohol Use Inventory (Wanberg, Horn, and Fisher, 1977), and the Alcohol
Dependence Scale (Skinner and Horn, 1984~.
In summary, there has been a burgeoning interest in the past decade in the development
of questionnaires, interviews, performance tests, personality inventories, and biological tests
that have vastly improved the scientist's ability to quantify virtually all of the relevant
aspects of alcoholism as a multidimensional clinical disorder. Research instruments such
as the MAST, the ASI, and the DIS have gained widespread acceptance among researchers
and clinicians (Lettieri, Nelson, and Sayers, 1985~. All of these instruments generate
reliable, standardized information that could be entered easily into a patient's hospital
record to become part of the reporting statistics available to researchers, funding agencies,
and health officials. Such data would be extremely useful as a basis for comparing
programs and settings in terms of client characteristics and treatment effectiveness, in turn
suggesting hypotheses for later clinical trials.
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The following research initiatives offer the opportunity to build on recent advances in the
technology of differential assessment:
· Appropriate emphasis should be placed on establishing the reliability and validity
of various assessment procedures. Clients should be evaluated by using standardized,
validated, reliable instruments. Efforts should be made to evaluate the clinical relevance
of these instruments for program planning, patient placement, treatment matching, and
outcome prediction. Emphasis should be given to measures of treatment readiness,
motivation for treatment, alcohol- and drug-use patterns, seventr of dependence,
alcohol-related disabilities, type and severity of psychopathology, social support network,
and coping skills. In those instances in which instruments have been developed for use
with nonalcoholic populations, efforts should be made to validate these measures on
alcoholic patient samples.
~ The identification of psychiatric comorbidity as a common feature of the clinical
picture of alcoholism implies that future research should investigate (a) the relative
importance of differentiating alcoholics according to major comorbidities (e.g., antisocial
personality, depression, anxiety disorder); and (b) treatment-matching hypotheses that
combine new psychiatric assessment procedures with diagnosis-related therapeutic
interventions.
· Given the importance of psychiatric interviewing for the development of accurate
diagnostic information, the following questions should be pursued. What is the impact of
varying degrees of structure in the interview instrument on the quality of clinical data
obtained? How do interviews with and without cutoffs compare? How accurate are
informants' reports? How much detail can respondents accurately provide about their
disorders? Are inaccuracies biased? How do a patient's mental state and level of
intoxication or withdrawal affect reporting?
Research on the Reliability and Validity of Assessments
Because patients in treatment for alcohol-related problems have often been found to be
defensive, uncooperative, sociopathic, or cognitively impaired, there is reason to be skeptical
about the accuracy of the information they provide about themselves for research and
clinical purposes. This skepticism has generated a substantial amount of methodological
research on the validity of verbal self-report methods; it has also stimulated the search for
biological markers and other objective measures of alcohol consumption that are not as
susceptible to response distortion (Babor, Stephens, and Marlatt, 1987; O'Farrell and
Maisto, 1987~. Given the importance of accurate information about the patient's presenting
symptoms, drinking history, and treatment outcome, research on the reliability and validity
of assessment procedures should receive high priority.
Research on Verbal Report Methods
Verbal report techniques (e.g., interviews, tests, questionnaires) have become the most
common method of obtaining clinical data on alcohol abuse and its modification through
treatment. Recent research has raised questions about the extent to which this method
provides reliable and valid information for research purposes. A review of methodological
studies in the alcohol literature (Babor, Stephens, and Marlatt, 1987) shows that, although
information obtained from alcoholics tends to be generally reliable and valid, there can be
considerable variability in accuracy depending on the sensitivity of the information sought
(e.g., arrest records), the specificity of the validation criteria (e.g., archival records,
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breathalyser readings, informants' reports), the personal characteristics of the respondents
(e.g., sober versus intoxicated), the time window of the report (e.g., recent, lifetime), and
the demand characteristics of the task situation (e.g., intake interview, research evaluation
at follow-up). Verbal data obtained from alcoholic respondents are inherently neither valid
nor invalid; they vary with the methodological sophistication of the data gatherer and the
personal characteristics of the respondent. These facts suggest that an emphasis on
demonstrating whether verbal report data are either valid or invalid is misplaced. A more
important issue is how to improve the validity of these procedures.
The variety of verbal report procedures used to assess drinking behavior and alcohol-related
problems makes it difficult to evaluate and compare results across studies. Until recently,
little attention was focused on the systematic evaluation of measurement procedures,
assessment contexts, and response sets. Alcohol research would benefit from a new
generation of methodological studies directed at procedures to enhance the validity of
verbal report data and at evaluating new procedures that provide objective indicators~of
recent alcohol consumption.
The generic term for factors that might influence verbal report information in a research
context is response effects. Although there has been some general research in this area
(Bradburn, 1983), there has been little research focused specifically on substance use or on
alcohol-related problems. Such studies are important in the alcohol field because research
findings largely depend on the accurate reporting of alcohol problems by study participants.
There are several opportunities for further research in this area. One is the impact of
other types of response effects (e.g., accuracy of recall) on the precision of self-reports.
There is evidence that the recall of health-related occurrences is inconsistent (Aneshensel
et al., 1987) and that, even for such seemingly salient events as hospitalization, there may
be underreporting after only one year (Cannel!, 1977~. Other research questions relate to
the costs and sacrifices of various methods of data collection. Pertinent issues include the
practical limits on the amount of information that can be obtained with self-report
questionnaires and the use of telephone interviews to obtain diagnostic and other clinical
data.
The following opportunities may serve as useful guidelines for a research agenda on verbal
report methods:
· More studies of assessment contexts and instructional sets are needed. For instance,
preliminary results suggest that individual assessments yield more valid results than group
assessments (Sobell and Sobell, 1981~; that telephone surveying and interviewing may be
a reasonably reliable means of obtaining information on drug use (Frank, 1985~; that
adolescents will give more valid self-reports in private settings (Gfroerer, 1985~; and that
the use of computerized assessments may yield more valid data than other techniques
(Skinner and Allen, 1983~.
· Individual difference factors (e.g., social desirability response sets) should be
investigated because of their potential influence on validity. Until it can be demonstrated
that social desirability scales (e.g., Crowne and Marlowe, 1960) actually measure response
bias on alcohol-related assessments, however, their use should not be incorporated
automatically into assessment batteries (cf. Bradburn, 1983~.
· Some invalid responses may be related to forgetting. In addition, there is a strong
relationship between mental status and the validity of self-reports (Miller and Barasch,
1985), suggesting the need for careful assessment of organic impairment in respondents.
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.
Recently developed time-line follow-back (Sobell et al., 1986) and retrospective diary
procedures should be evaluated to assess their ability to improve the reliability and validity
of verbal reports by providing recall cues to respondents.
· Because no single measure of alcohol consumption is entirely valid, most researchers
recommend the use of convergent lines of evidence to establish drinking status or to
measure drinking behavior. Such analytic procedures as the multitrait-multimethod
assessment matrix should be used to evaluate the discriminant and convergent validity of
verbal report data. Different verbal report strategies for quantifying consumption (e.g., the
quantity-frequency question, the diary method/time-line follow-back procedure) should be
compared. The use of multiple biological indicators may have promise as a way of
corroborating verbal reports, provided sensitivity problems can be overcome (Cushman et
al., 1984~.
Use of Biological Markers
The presence of alcohol in blood, urine, sweat, or breath is strong evidence that drinking
has occurred. Because the duration of abstinence and the amount of drinking following
relapse are important criteria for treatment outcome (Babor, Cooney, and Lauerman, 1987),
there is great interest in developing laboratory tests (markers) that detect alcohol
consumption. An ideal marker would be one that reflected the mean blood alcohol level
over several weeks, that did not depend on the presence of organ damage, and that
returned to normal relatively quickly with abstinence (O'Farrell and Maisto, 1987~.
The major problem with blood, breath, and urine alcohol tests is the relatively short
half-life of alcohol after it is ingested. Alcohol is usually not present in any of these fluids
hours after ingestion. Thus, a positive alcohol test indicates that drinking occurred that
day, but it is not an indication of chronic alcohol use. In this regard, the results of a study
by Orrego and colleagues (1979) are important for those interested in alcoholism treatment
evaluation. The study was carried out as part of a clinical trial evaluating propylthiouracil
treatment of alcoholic hepatitis, in which daily urine specimens were collected and analyzed
for ethanol.
. · ~ ~ ,
Of the patients in this study who consistently denied drinking during a
six-month period, 25 percent had positive urine specimens. Another 25 percent made
claims of abstinence for one week that were refuted by urine tests during the six months.
Because blood, breath, and urine alcohol tests are indicators of recent alcohol use only, one
focus of current research is the development of methods to measure alcohol use over longer
periods. Phillips (1984) studied a sweat patch that is applied to the skin and cannot be
removed without leaving a mark. The patch collects sweat for seven days, which is then
analyzed for ethanol. Results showed that 50 percent (11 of 22) of the subjects who
returned for follow-up underreported the amount they drank. However, half of the normal
volunteers failed to return to have their patches removed; consequently, lack of patient
cooperation may present a problem with this method.
Liver enzymes rise with excessive alcohol ingestion and therefore are useful in detecting
drinking. Gamma glutamyl transpeptidase (GOT) increases with prolonged heavy drinking
to a greater extent than other liver enzymes (Straw and Lieber, 1980~. However, GGT is
not a specific marker, because liver injuries other than alcohol abuse also result in
increased serum concentrations. Conceivably, isoenyme profiling techniques may make it
possible to distinguish the GGT elevations caused by drinking from those associated with
other factors. Recently, Irwin and coworkers (1988) reported that the parallel combination
of the percentage of increase in GGT, aspartate aminotransferase (SGOT), and alanine
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aminotransferase (SGPT) over posttreatment discharge values effectively distinguished
recovering alcoholics who remained abstinent for three months from those who resumed
drinking.
Another marker involves the mean corpuscular volume (MCV) of red blood cells, which
increases with heavy alcohol consumption independent of liver damage (Gheno,
Magnabosco, and Mazzei, 1979~. Following the cessation of drinking, MCV returns very
slowly to normal. Because an alcoholic may have been abstinent for a long period and still
have an elevated MCV (Straw et al., 1979), the usefulness of MCV as a marker for relapse
is limited. Laboraeor~y tests for such factors as GOT level and MCV reflect the
consequences of alcoholism (i.e., tissue injury) rather than alcohol abuse. The tests of
people who are abusing alcohol but have not yet developed organ damage will be normal,
a consequence that explains the poor sensitivity of these tests. Other illnesses win also
result in test abnormalities. Used by themselves, then, these tests do not have great
sensitivity or specificity; however, the combinations used by Cushman and colleagues (1984)
and Ryback and coworkers (1982) improve diagnostic accuracy.
High-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDLC) levels also increase during drinking episodes
and return to control levels within one to two weeks after the cessation of drinking
(Devenyi et al., 1981~. However, HDLC may not be suitable for monitoring drinking in
patients with significant liver disease (cirrhosis or alcoholic hepatitis). Haskell, Camargo,
and Williams (1984) reported that HDLC also falls significantly when moderate drinkers
abstain and rises with the resumption of moderate drinking. Puddy and colleagues (1986)
found similar results and, in addition, reported that apoliprotein A-I and A-II declined
when moderate drinkers reduced their drinking from five drinks to one per day.
Discriminant function analysis showed that a change in the serum apoliprotein A-II was the
best of the markers compared by this group (apoliprotein A-I, HDLC, GOT, and MCV)
for correctly classifying (with 96 percent accuracy) the category of drinking either five drinks
or one.
Platelet monoamine oxidase has been reported to be lower in alcoholics (Wiberg, Gottfries,
and Oreland, 1977; Major and Murphy, 1978; Alexopoulos et al., 1981), but this finding was
not replicated in a more recent study (Tabakoff et al., 1988~. The Tabakoff team also
found that platelet adenylate cyclase activity, after stimulation with quanine nucleotide,
cesium fluoride, or prostaglandin E, was significantly lower in alcoholics, although the basal
platelet adenylate cyclase activity was the same in alcoholics and controls. Because the
alcoholics in this study had been abstinent for one to four years, the utilizer of these
markers for treatment outcome evaluation is uncertain.
There is currently considerable interest in two markers: (1) the hemoglobin acetaldahyde
adduct (A1) factor and (2) deglycosylated transferrin. In one study (Hoberman and Chiodo,
1982), hemoglobin At was significantly elevated in alcoholic patients with and without liver
disease compared with normal subjects, but there was some overlap between the two groups
and levels returned to normal with abstinence. The duration of abstinence required for
hemoglobin At to return to normal needs to be defined. Stibler, Borg, and Joustra (1986)
have shown that ~carbohydrate-deficient" transferrin is a specific marker for chronic drinking
with a biologic half-life of approximately 17 days after cessation of alcohol ingestion.
Behrens and coworkers (1988) have extended these observations on the specificity of
"carbohydrate-deficient~ transferrin from Swedish patients to different racial groups in the
United States. However, the sensitivity of this marker may be a problem. The Takase
research team (1985) found serum desialotransferrin in only 60 percent of Japanese
alcoholics.
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At this time, with the exception of frequent alcohol tests, biological markers either are not
sensitive enough or need further evaluation before they can be used alone to monitor
treatment outcome. Markers can be of value as part of an assessment battery that includes
self-reports, reports by collateral informants, and official records.
The following opportunities for research on biological markers of treatment outcome should
be pursued to improve the validity of treatment evaluation research:
· Researchers should develop and test markers that are sensitive to moderate and
heavy alcohol consumption. Markers that return to normal with the cessation of drinking
and show prompt elevation at the initiation of drinking would be particularly useful in
treatment outcome studies.
· Another type of marker that should be developed and tested is one that is sensitive
to cumulative ethanol intake but independent of alcohol-related tissue damage.
Automation of Data Collection
In recent years there has been an increasing trend toward the computerization of diagnostic
interviews; that is, rather than using a paper-and-pencil instrument, software programs are
written so that interview questions appear on a computer screen. The questions are read
to the subject (alternatively, the subject may sit at the terminal and read them), and the
response is keyed in, usually with a single number according to a prearranged code. There
are numerous advantages to this technology, and it is likely to become increasingly popular.
Additional advantages and savings are realized if computerized interviews can be
self-administered by research subjects. These advantages go beyond economy. For example,
there is evidence that a computerized, self-administered examination involving interaction
with a machine rather than another human may foster a greater degree of respondent
candor (Lucas et al., 1977; Duffy and Waterton, 1984~. Another possible advantage of the
computer in clinical settings--perhaps one of the greatest potential advantages of
automation--is in automating the collection of routine data as a research data base for
~quasi-experimental" or even true experimental designs. There have been some attempts
to form an accumulating data base out of routine examinations, but typically these have
depended on the willingness of busy personnel to transfer their clinical observations to
computer-readable fonns, a labor-intensive rather than a labor-saving effort.
It has been demonstrated that paper-and-pencil structured interviews can be used
successfully as a means of routine data collection in clinical settings and can even be
acceptable to clinicians in such a context (Helzer et al., 1981~. However, computerization
does not merely make interviews and questionnaires more accessible and efficient by having
structured interviews available for computer administration by lay or clinical interviewers.
It also provides an electronic data base without additional labor. If patients can
self-administer the interviews, an accumulating electronic data base would be provided at
considerable savings of effort.
There are a number of opportunities for research on data collection. Answers to the
following questions would be valuable in deciding whether to pursue a policy of increased
automation of diagnostic interview data:
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· What degree of clinical detail is ascertainable- by using a self-administered,
computerized format?
· Are subjects more or less likely to remember past symptoms or to report sensitive
data when queried by a computer?
· How well do structured interviews perform on a computer administration format?
· Given the opportunity, would clinicians and investigators find self-administered
interview data useful?
ASSESSMENT OF TREATMENT PROCESS, QUALITY, AND OUTCOME
Advances in assessment techniques have contributed to a more accurate estimation of the
relative contributions of client characteristics, therapeutic interventions, program settings,
and environmental variables to the success or failure of treatment.
Treatment Variables
The relevance of treatment research to policy and clinical practice is directly related to the
ability of such research to evaluate the costs and effectiveness of different treatment
interventions as they relate to specific types of individuals. The complexity of the problem
of matching individuals to treatments is related to the complexity of the treatment system
in which problem drinkers are typically processed. This system consists of a complex array
of treatment settings (e.g., inpatient, outpatient, residential), therapeutic approaches
.
. ~ . .
(psychotherapy, AA, peer approaches), and treatment providers (e.g., psychotherapists,
recovering alcoholics).
Often, clients are exposed to several different treatment providers and therapeutic
approaches in the same setting, after which they move through a series of settings during
the course of different stages of treatment and recovery. At the program level of analysis
where setting, staff, and therapeutic approaches interact, the mix of experiences may
overwhelm the individual contributions of specific treatment variables or components.
Specification of treatment is also needed in terms of the duration and quality of exposure.
Anta-buse patients may have many treatment contacts, but the psychological impact of the
contacts may be minimal. Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), on the other hand, may exert a
profound effect on attitudes and behavior in a short time as a function of very intensive
involvement of the alcoholic in the fellowship's group process.
Recent developments in treatment specification are likely to affect the design of new
procedures for the measurement of treatment process and quality (McCrady and Sher,
1985~. A number of instruments have been developed and validated for the purpose of
studying characteristics of the treatment setting and process (Lettieri, Nelson, and Sayers,
1985~. Aspects of treatment specification include the intensity and duration of services
received, the type of therapeutic modality the patient is given, the personality and skills
of the therapist, the emergence of a "therapeutic alliances or partnership between patient
and therapist, the characteristics of the setting, the competency of the program staff, the
degree to which the treatment is delivered as ideally intended (its integrity), and the general
atmosphere of the program as experienced by patients. These instruments include rating
scales that are designed for trained observers to use to identify unique features of individual
and group therapy, client rating forms that are used to assess the qualitative aspects of
the services received, and facility inventories that provide a quantitative assessment of the
structural properties of a program.
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Outcome Variables
Behavioral and social researchers (McLellan et al., 1983; Pattison, 1985) have argued that
traditional outcome assessment methods are too global and imprecise to provide an
adequate evaluation of client-treatment matches. This criticism is based on evidence that
therapeutic change is multidimensional and that affecting different dimensions requires
different types of treatment. There is a growing consensus (Emrick and Hansen, 1983) that,
at a minimum, treatment outcome should be evaluated according to the following
dimensions: drug and alcohol use, vocational adjustment, psychological problem severity,
interpersonal relations, and criminal behavior. Another important trend in the specification
of outcome variables has been the growing attention to process measures (Moos and
Finney, 1985~. Process analysis focuses attention on the causal linkages between treatment
components and dimensions of outcome. In general, little research has been devoted to
the short-term impact of specific program components such as alcohol education, AA
groups, and individual counseling. Short-term gains, such as the information acquired
regarding the negative consequences of drinking, changes in attitude toward alcohol, and
improvements in psychological adjustment, can be assessed quite readily by means of brief
tests and rating scales at the termination of inpatient treatment or immediately following
a prescribed period of outpatient treatment.
At present, there is a strong need to apply these newly developed techniques of specifying
treatment quality, process, and outcomes to identification of the active ingredients of
traditional and experimental treatment interventions. lithe following areas should be
explored in research on treatment process and outcome variables:
· What are the active ingredients of therapeutic interventions, including AA,
cognitive-behavioral therapy, and so on?
· Do the various standard components of currently available multimodal rehabilitation
programs (e.g., patient education, Twelve Steps groups) produce short-term changes in the
patient's attitudes, motivation, and skills that predict long-term remission?
· Markers of compliance with treatment should be developed and tested to facilitate
the evaluation of drug therapies. For example, riboflavin markers that can be placed in
placebo and active medication can be used to detect compliance with drug therapy. Carbon
disulfide breath analysis has a potential for evaluating compliance with disulfiram therapy.
GROWING SOPHISTICATION IN METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES
In recent years, a variety of research approaches have been developed for use in treatment
evaluation. As portrayed in Table 8-1, a basic distinction is often made between two types
of research strategies: true experimental designs and quasi-experimental designs (Campbell
and Stanley, 1963~.
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Table 8-1. Methodological Approaches to Alcoholism Treatment Evaluation Research
Research Design
Populations Sampled
From
Descriptive/Quasi -Experimental
Experimental
One Facility
Several Facilities
All Facilities
Before-After/
Outcome prediction
studies
Multisite, multiprogram
random sample studies
Multisite, multiprogram
nonrandom sample studies
Aggregate-level descriptive
studies
Preclinical studies
Small-scale random
assignment studies
Multicenter clinical
trials
Experimental Approaches
True experimental designs attempt to rule out all or most of the obvious confounding
variables by randomly assigning subjects to experimental and control treatments. Preclinical
studies are usually performed on small groups of patients (or animals) to establish a causal
linkage between some treatment procedure (e.g., emetine) and a measure that should
logically be associated with treatment outcome (e.g., conditioned aversion to alcohol).
Small-scale random assignment studies operate at a broader level of analysis, by taking
defined treatment modalities or programs and comparing them to no treatment, minimal
treatment, or alternative treatments. Multicenter clinical trials represent the culmination
of preclinical and small-scale studies.
Quasi-Experimental Approaches
In the alcohol field, true experimental designs, especially multicenter clinical trials, are
difficult and expensive to carter out. This may explain why there have been numerous
quasi-experimental studies in which researchers have explored treatment questions by
weaving a net of circumstantial evidence around the observed associations between client
characteristics and differential treatment response. The quasi-experiment is a design in
which a variety of strategies other than random assignment are used to minimize the
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influence of confounding variables. One approach has been to gather treatment and
outcome data from a large number of patients who are being treated at different facilities
or who have been exposed to different therapeutic modalities (multisite, multiprogram
studies). Typically, the patients are not randomly assigned to these conditions, and the
research is often designed to answer questions other than those dealing with treatment
matching (e.g., Cronkite and Moos, 1980~. To control for the influence of major
confounding variables, multivariate statistical procedures such as covariance analyses and
partial correlation are used.
Although the literature is not lacking in multisite, multiprogram prediction studies (Armor,
Polich, and Stambul, 1978; Brown and Lyons, 1981; McLellan et al., 1983), it is important
to note the limitations of previous research. First, most prediction studies have been
limited to small samples drawn from a small number of unrepresentative treatment settings.
Second, even when researchers have sampled patients across multiple settings, only a few
studies have considered the characteristics of the setting as well as the quality and types of
treatment received; even fewer have conducted extensive evaluations of patient
characteristics. Primarily because of logistical problems and the costs of conducting this
type of research, there has been an inverse relationship between the number of patients
studied and the amount of data collected.
Aggregate-Level Descriptive Studies
In recent years, several attempts have been made to conduct general facility surveys as a
means of generating descriptive statistics about the national configuration of alcoholism
treatment services (Yahr, 1988~. These inventories include the National Drug and
Alcoholism Treatment Utilization Survey (NDATUS), the American Hospital Association
Annual Survey, and surveys conducted by the National Association of State Alcohol and
Drug Abuse Directors and the National Association of Alcoholism Treatment Programs.
The most comprehensive aggregate-level descriptive survey is the NDATUS, which has been
conducted periodically by NIAAA since 1979. Survey forms for the NDATUS were
distributed to all known treatment units in the United States in 1979, 1980, and 1982. A
shorter suney, the National Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Program Inventory (NDAPI),
was conducted in 1984 to define the universe of facilities that could later be used for more
specialized sampling studies.
These surveys have been designed to serve different functions, including resource planning
and management on the state and federal levels; the generation of cross-sectional and
longitudinal data on treatment utilization, staffing, funding, and length of stay; and the
description of characteristics of programs, clients, and ownership of the facilities. In the
case of the NDATUS, budgetary considerations have led to a drastic reduction in the
amount of data collected; nevertheless, the abbreviated version (the NDAPI) sets the stage
for more detailed surveys using random or stratified sampling techniques. The potential
for weeding the more intensive, client-focused, multiprogram study designs to large-scale,
representative sample surveys could constitute a significant advance in the treatment
evaluation knowledge base.
At present, the NDATUS is a brief questionnaire that requires the reporting unit to give
its primary orientation (alcoholism, drug abuse, mixed), physical environment or setting
(e.g., hospital, freestanding unit), population served (e.g., inner city, suburban), kinds of
services provided (e.g., group therapy, education, aftercare), ownership characteristics,
staffing patterns, and client census capacity. In addition, current patients are recorded
according to race/ethnicity, age, and sex. Descriptive data obtained from the NDATUS
- 161
OCR for page 162
applications have been extremely useful in describing characteristics of different treatment
systems and identifying changes and trends over time (Yahr, 1988~. Although the
NDATUS is lacking in most of the client and treatment variables now considered crucial
to a proper understanding of treatment efficacy and efficiency, these data could be collected
simultaneously from staff, administrators, and clients to provide a more comprehensive
description of the services received by different types of clients. The final ingredient of
such an approach is the measurement of short-term and long-term treatment gains by using
periodic interviews with selected samples of patients at various intervals during and after
treatment. Another approach, exemplified in the Epidemiologic Catchment Area Study
(Helzer and Ptyzbeck, 1988), is to gather data about drinking behavior and treatment use
from general published samples and compare these data with those collected from
representative treatment settings.
As shown in Table 8-1, the research findings emanating from preclinical, experimental,
quasi-experimental, and descriptive research approaches should provide a comprehensive and
complementary understanding of the many facets of alcohol problem treatment. Eventually,
the active components of the most effective treatment should be identified, leading to a
more systematic program of clinical trials that will provide a more definitive test of
treatment efficacy, especially in relation to different client types, than has heretofore been
possible (Finney and Moos, 1986~.
Many opportunities exist for research employing complementary methodologic approaches.
The considerations noted above suggest the following programmatic recommendations for
funding agencies, research centers, and investigators:
· The new generation of assessment technologies should be employed to evaluate
treatment efficacy by means of innovative research methods. Experimental,
quasi-experimental, and naturalistic research designs each have their place in treatment
evaluation.
· Descriptive studies of the treatment system at the aggregate level of analysis can
provide valuable information about changes in the client population, variations in
substance-use patterns, trends in program characteristics, and new approaches to treatment.
Health services research should be encouraged as the first step toward an integrated
program of descriptive and experimental research that will eventually lead to multicenter
clinical trials of promising treatment interventions.
· Experimental research designs should be encouraged for alcoholism treatment
evaluations whenever appropriate. When experimental designs are employed, there must
be adequate specification of the client, program setting, therapist, and treatment variables
that affect patient compliance and outcome. When experimental designs are not feasible
because of ethical or practical constraints, the new generation of asessment technology
should be employed to evaluate treatment efficacy by means of innovative, nonexperimental
research methods.
· At times, program evaluation data have been used to support claims that one type
of treatment is superior to a lack of treatment or to some comparison treatment. Success
rates of 80 to 90 percent have been used in media advertisements to solicit patients to
proprietary treatment programs. Outcome monitoring studies that do not meet acceptable
criteria for making causal inferences have been used to justify requests for insurance
reimbursement of unevaluated treatments. At present, there is a significant risk of
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OCR for page 163
misinterpretation in the use of unsound research designs in studies sponsored by individuals
or corporations that have a financial interest in the results. Whenever possible, evaluation
research should be designed and conducted by investigators who are not likely to benefit
from the result either materially or professionally.
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
alcohol consumption
