The validity of a social indicator approach to substance misuse needs assessment

Factors other than the magnitude of a community's drug- or alcohol-use-related problems may play a large role in resource allocation. Needs assessment approaches such as key informant interviews and household surveys can contribute to a more informed process. An additional approach to needs assessment, social indicator modeling, addresses the high cost of surveys and the potential subjectivity of key informant interviews. This paper discusses the history of social indicator approaches to needs assessment and reviews recent equitable distribution approaches. An equitable distribution model of alcohol- and other drug-use-related problems was created and validated. The drug model accounted for close to 50% of the variation in estimates of lifetime diagnosis of drug dependence or misuse. The alcohol model performed less successfully, accounting for 21% of the variation in lifetime diagnosis of alcohol-use-related problems.