Browsing by Subject "measurement reactivity"

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    Research Participants Describe Recovery-Oriented Surveys as Beneficial to Recovery from Alcohol and Substance Use Disorders
    (2023-06) Krentzman, Amy; Gass, Julie; Lowery, Channel
    Purpose: Although the self-monitoring of substance and alcohol use consumption is included in many treatment protocols, research has been mixed regarding its efficacy for promoting behavior change. Most self-monitoring studies have tracked pathology-oriented constructs. The self-monitoring of recovery-oriented factors (e.g., writing a gratitude list, reaching out to others, happiness with recovery) is rarely investigated but could yield valuable insights for the development of new tools to support ongoing recovery. Methods: Participants (N = 32; M = 40 years old, 47% indicating alcohol as primary addiction) were control-group members in a randomized trial while enrolled in AUD and SUD treatment. They completed surveys daily for 30 days. Surveys included the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS); the Satisfaction with Life Scale; and single items assessing abstinence self-efficacy, urges, happiness with recovery, quality of life, commitment to sobriety, and whether participants had engaged in a set of recovery practices that day. Surveys were intended only as measurement but participants described the surveys in exit interviews as supportive of their recovery. This mixed-methods study was designed to answer these questions: Did participants obtain benefit from the surveys, and if so, to what degree? Which instruments, specifically, were most frequently mentioned as impactful? We operationalized categories of benefit (e.g., none, low, moderate, high) inductively based on qualitative interviews and tallied the percentage of participants who mentioned each instrument in the exit interviews. Results: Participants described high (n = 24, 75%), moderate (n = 3, 9%), low (n = 4, 13%), and no (n = 1, 3%) benefit from completing surveys. The top three most frequently referenced questionnaires were the PANAS (mentioned by 84% of the sample), the queries of recovery practices (69%), and items assessing urges (50%). Conclusions: Most control group members described daily recovery-oriented surveys as beneficial. The surveys functioned as a self-monitoring mechanism. These results indicate that recovery-oriented self-monitoring has potential as an intervention and can cause measurement reactivity. Developers of recovery mobile apps should include assessments of affect, recovery activities, and urges, as these queries were most frequently mentioned as impactful by our sample.