Control groups in routine evaluations of outcomes of alcoholism treatment.

The use of no treatment or waiting list controls for the time span of both treatment and follow-up of one year or longer involves ethical and methodological problems such as sample attrition; however, shorter follow-ups would lead to overestimates of long-term outcomes. Other comparison groups such as nonspecific treatment controls do not provide an estimate of what would happen to the clients without treatment and what their recovery chances would be in other treatment centers. Therefore, as an alternative to traditional design for outcome rate evaluations, the present paper suggests comparisons to pooled data from follow-ups of treated alcoholics. Until methodologically more acceptable pooled data is available, the data on untreated alcoholics pooled and re-analyzed by Emrick and the data on treated alcoholics presented by Gillies, Laverty, Smart, and Aharan could provide a temporary interpretational background. The most serious drawback of the two criterion samples is insufficient description of basic characteristics of the clients (e.g., in respect to age, education, sex, occupation, and to personality measures). More detailed descriptions in most future evaluation studies would make it possible to create better described criterion samples by pooling the data. This would also allow further analyses of the relationship of client characteristics to outcomes and, thus, would allow for special credit to outcomes with difficult clientele.