Characteristics of men with substance use disorder consequent to illicit drug use: comparison of a random sample and volunteers.
OBJECTIVE
Men qualifying for substance use disorder (SUD) consequent to consumption of an illicit drug were compared according to recruitment method. It was hypothesized that volunteers would be more self-disclosing and exhibit more severe disturbances compared to randomly recruited subjects.


METHODS
Personal, demographic, family, social, substance use, psychiatric, and SUD characteristics of volunteers (N = 146) were compared to randomly recruited (N = 102) subjects.


RESULTS
Volunteers had lower socioceconomic status, were more likely to be African American, and had lower IQ than randomly recruited subjects. Volunteers also evidenced greater social and family maladjustment and more frequently had received treatment for substance abuse. In addition, lower social desirability response bias was observed in the volunteers. SUD was not more severe in the volunteers; however, they reported a higher lifetime rate of opiate, diet, depressant, and analgesic drug use.


CONCLUSIONS
Volunteers and randomly recruited subjects qualifying for SUD consequent to illicit drug use are similar in SUD severity but differ in terms of severity of psychosocial disturbance and history of drug involvement. The factors discriminating volunteers and randomly recruited subjects are well known to impact on outcome, hence they need to be considered in research design, especially when selecting a sampling strategy in treatment research.
Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Center for Education and Drug Abuse Research, School of Pharmacy, University of Pittsburgh, 711 Salk Hall, Pittsburgh, PA 15261, USA. maureen@pitt.edu
Maureen D
MD
Reynolds
Ralph E
RE
Tarter
Levent
L
Kirisci
D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D016009:Chi-Square Distribution; D016001:Confidence Intervals; D006801:Humans; D013287:Illicit Drugs / Q000191:economics; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D016017:Odds Ratio; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000191:economics / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000523:psychology*
D013287:Illicit Drugs