Predicting alcohol treatment program drop-outs.

The feasibility of using psychological tests to predict patient drop-outs from an alcohol treatment program was studied. Eighty-four alcoholic male veterans being treated in an inpatient program were administrered the Rotter Locus of Control scale (I-E) and the MMPI-168 at the beginning of the treatment. Those patients who completed an 8 week inpatient program and a one year outpatient program were compared to those patients who completed the inpatient phase, but dropped out during the outpatient phase on the five MMPI-168 factors and the total I-E score. The two groups differed significantly only on the I-E. The data was also subjected to a discriminant analysis to generate a prediction equation. The prediction equation correctly classified 82% of the drop-outs.