Development of an instrument to identify barriers to treatment for addicted women, from their perspective.

This article reports the development of the Allen Barriers to Treatment Instrument, designed specifically for identifying barriers for women. An extensive search and review of the literature in the areas of barriers, access to care, and utilization of services was completed. Not only was a definition for "barriers" derived from this search, indicators for items used on the instrument were ascertained also. The article presents information on the rationale for developing the instrument the way it is and information on scoring.