Establishing reliability of the Community Oriented Program Environment Scale on chemically-dependent black females

Research instruments are often used on samples without determining their reliability for that group of subjects. As a result, information is disseminated that really has no scientifically sound base. Thirty chemically-dependent Black females were chosen as subjects to determine reliability of the Community Oriented Program Environment Scale on this population. They were administered the instrument, and reliability was obtained using the Kuder-Richardson 20 internal consistency test. Findings showed low overall reliability and extremely low subscale reliability on this sample. It was concluded that this instrument would yield uninterpretable data in looking at attrition and treatment environment with this population.