Use of employment criteria for measuring the effectiveness of methadone maintenance programs.

If employment is to be considered a criteria of success in the treatments of drug abuse, it is necessary to obtain an understanding of the differences in results produced by various measures of employment and the implications of each for evaluating program effectiveness. This article compares three measures by which to analyze chronological employment data for the same cohort of clients across the same time period. It discusses the merits and limitations of these measures as evaluation tools. The findings derive from a study of male clients who were maintained for 2 or more years without interruption in a methadone maintenance program.