Predicting Attrition in the Treatment of Substance Use Disorders.

The authors examined the retention rates of 191 participants who were assigned to an episode of substance abuse treatment. Two types of attrition, due to participants withdrawing prematurely from treatment or failing to complete a posttest survey, were investigated. A significant finding of the study was that attrition can be predicted with some certainty. In spite of being a consistent predictor of attrition, however, quantitative measures explained only about 27 % of the variance in therapy outcomes. Therefore, recommendations for future research were included to highlight the importance of exploring the impact of contextual factors on client retention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]