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A systematic review of substance misuse assessment packages
Author(s) -
Sweetman Jennifer,
Raistrick Duncan,
Mdege Noreen D.,
Crosby Helen
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
drug and alcohol review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.018
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1465-3362
pISSN - 0959-5236
DOI - 10.1111/dar.12039
Subject(s) - bespoke , addiction , cochrane library , medline , substance abuse , addiction medicine , triage , payment , scale (ratio) , medicine , psychology , computer science , psychiatry , meta analysis , business , world wide web , physics , quantum mechanics , advertising , political science , law
Issues Health‐care systems globally are moving away from process measures of performance to payments for outcomes achieved. It follows that there is a need for a selection of proven quality tools that are suitable for undertaking comprehensive assessments and outcomes assessments. This review aimed to identify and evaluate existing comprehensive assessment packages. The work is part of a national program in the UK , C ollaborations in L eadership of A pplied H ealth R esearch and C are. Approach Systematic searches were carried out across major databases to identify instruments designed to assess substance misuse. For those instruments identified, searches were carried out using the C ochrane L ibrary, E mbase, O vid MEDLINE ® and PsychINFO to identify articles reporting psychometric data. Key Findings From 595 instruments, six met the inclusion criteria: A ddiction S everity I ndex; C hemical U se, A buse and D ependence S cale; F orm 90; M audsley A ddiction P rofile; M easurements in the A ddictions for T riage and E valuation; and S ubstance A buse O utcomes M odule. The most common reasons for exclusion were that instruments were: (i) designed for a specific substance (239); (ii) not designed for use in addiction settings (136); (iii) not providing comprehensive assessment (89); and (iv) not suitable as an outcome measure (20). Implications The six packages are very different and suited to different uses. No package had adequate evaluation of their properties and so the emphasis should be on refining a small number of tools with very general application rather than creating new ones. An alternative to using ‘off‐the‐shelf’ packages is to create bespoke packages from well‐validated, single‐construct scales. [Sweetman J, Raistrick D, Mdege ND, Crosby H. A systematic review of substance misuse assessment packages. Drug Alcohol Rev 2013;32:347‐355]