Stinchfield R D, Niforopulos L, Feder S H
Department of Pediatrics, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis 55455.
J Stud Alcohol. 1994 May;55(3):285-9. doi: 10.15288/jsa.1994.55.285.
This study examined the problem of follow-up contact bias in adolescent substance abuse treatment outcome research. The sample consisted of 299 male and female adolescents at an AA-oriented hospital-based inpatient substance abuse treatment program. Six-month and 12-month follow-up data were collected from adolescents and their parents with a sequence of standard and supplementary follow-up data collection procedures. Standard efforts were implemented first and subjects contacted were assigned to the easy-to-contact group. Those subjects not contacted with the initial standard efforts were included in the supplementary effort. Subjects contacted with supplementary efforts constituted the difficult-to-contact group. The difficult-to-contact group exhibited consistently poorer outcomes compared to the easy-to-contact group across most outcome variables and for both follow-up periods. Outcome results from extant studies with a significant number of noncontacted subjects may represent overestimates of outcome and may not be generalizable to the noncontacted group.
本研究探讨了青少年药物滥用治疗效果研究中的随访接触偏差问题。样本包括一家以戒酒互助会为导向的医院住院药物滥用治疗项目中的299名青少年男女。通过一系列标准和补充随访数据收集程序，从青少年及其父母那里收集了6个月和12个月的随访数据。首先实施标准的随访工作，将联系上的受试者分配到易于联系组。那些通过最初的标准随访工作未能联系上的受试者被纳入补充随访工作。通过补充随访工作联系上的受试者构成难以联系组。在大多数结果变量以及两个随访期内，难以联系组的结果始终比易于联系组差。现有研究中有大量未联系到的受试者，其结果可能高估了治疗效果，并且可能无法推广到未联系到的群体。
