Follow-up contact bias in adolescent substance abuse treatment outcome research.
This study examined the problem of follow-up contact bias in adolescent substance abuse treatment outcome research. The sample consisted of 299 male and female adolescents at an AA-oriented hospital-based inpatient substance abuse treatment program. Six-month and 12-month follow-up data were collected from adolescents and their parents with a sequence of standard and supplementary follow-up data collection procedures. Standard efforts were implemented first and subjects contacted were assigned to the easy-to-contact group. Those subjects not contacted with the initial standard efforts were included in the supplementary effort. Subjects contacted with supplementary efforts constituted the difficult-to-contact group. The difficult-to-contact group exhibited consistently poorer outcomes compared to the easy-to-contact group across most outcome variables and for both follow-up periods. Outcome results from extant studies with a significant number of noncontacted subjects may represent overestimates of outcome and may not be generalizable to the noncontacted group.
Stinchfield
R D
RD
Department of Pediatrics, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis 55455.
Niforopulos
L
L
Feder
S H
SH
D000293:Adolescent; D000437:Alcoholism / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D015982:Bias; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D013287:Illicit Drugs; D008297:Male; D008910:Minnesota / Q000453:epidemiology; D010043:Outcome and Process Assessment, Health Care / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D010352:Patient Dropouts / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011619:Psychotropic Drugs; D012008:Recurrence; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D016320:Substance Abuse Treatment Centers; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation*
D013287:Illicit Drugs; D011619:Psychotropic Drugs