Tracking and Incentivizing Substance Abusers in Longitudinal Research

Tracking substance abusers in longitudinal research: understanding follow-up contact difficulty.

Studies examining follow-up contact difficulty provide useful information for planning longitudinal studies and for assessing the validity of follow-up data. Contact difficulty was examined among 96 substance abusers following substance abuse treatment. Interview completion rates at the 3-month and 6-month follow-ups were 93 and 97%, respectively. The extent of contact efforts required to compl...

Children of substance abusers: overview of research findings

Children of substance abusers: overview of research findings.

A relationship between parental substance abuse and subsequent alcohol problems in their children has been documented extensively. Children of alcoholics (COAs) are considered to be at high risk because there is a greater likelihood that they will develop alcoholism compared with a randomly selected child from the same community. COAs and children of other drug-abusing parents are especially vu...

Children of substance abusers: overview of research findings

Psychiatric Research Interview for Substance and Mental Disorders (PRISM): reliability for substance abusers.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to investigate the reliability of a new semistructured diagnostic interview, the Psychiatric Research Interview for Substance and Mental Disorders (PRISM), for substance-abusing patients. The reliability of psychiatric diagnoses for individuals who drink heavily or use drugs has been shown to be problematic. The PRISM was designed to improve the reliabili...