Alcohol Treatment Research Assessment Exposure Subject Reactivity Effects: Part II. Treatment Engagement and Involvement *‪.‬

AS REVIEWED IN CLIFFORD ET AL. (2007; this issue), for more than 30 years, alcohol treatment researchers have alluded to the possibility that the process of research assessment may enhance alcohol treatment effects, operationalized by measures of alcohol use and related consequences. The report by Clifford et al. provides experimental findings relating to the causal relationship between the frequency of assessment and comprehensiveness of research assessment exposure and alcohol use and related consequences 1 year after the pretreatment assessment. In summary, that study had four experimental conditions--(1) infrequent-brief, (2) frequent-brief, (3) infrequent-comprehensive, and (4) frequent-comprehensive--created by the factorial combination of comprehensiveness of assessment (comprehensive or brief) and frequency of assessment (frequent or infrequent). The results showed that the infrequent-brief condition had the smallest reactivity effects at 1-year follow-up, compared with the other three conditions that did not differ from each other. The alcohol-use disorders clinical research literature does not provide empirical evidence on how treatment research assessment exposure reactivity effects might occur. One possibility is that assessment reactivity occurs by changing the participants' engagement and degree of involvement in formal alcohol and other drug treatment. The purpose of this article is to report analyses of the data by Clifford et al. (2007; this issue) on the effects of the frequency of assessment and the comprehensiveness of treatment research assessment exposure on participants' treatment engagement and involvement in treatment for substance-use disorders. A second aim of this article is to report analyses addressing the question of if the reactivity effects found by Clifford et al. were mediated by the engagement and involvement of participants in treatment.