Willingness and appropriateness of peers participating in emerging adults' substance misuse treatment
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Updated: May 13, 2026

Integrating Computerized Linguistic and Social Network Analyses to Capture Addiction Recovery Capital in an Online Community
Published on: May 31, 2019
Douglas C Smith1, Leah Cleeland, Ashley Middleton
1University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. smithdc@illinois.edu
Abstract:
This study investigates the feasibility of adapting empirically-supported family treatments for emerging adult peer dyads. Data were collected (n=84) from emerging adults and their peers. Peers completed measures of substance use, willingness to participate in their friends' treatments, and an adapted version of the Significant Other Behavior Questionnaire (SBQ), which measures concerned significant others' (CSO) responses to another's use such a punishing, supporting, or withdrawing from the user. Peers were more likely to support sobriety or enable use, versus punishing use or withdrawing from their friends. Overall, peers were quite willing to assist in treatment, but heavily using peers were less enthusiastic. For some emerging adults, their current peers may represent untapped resources to integrate into treatment, and providing peer-enhanced treatments may expand the reach of services to non-treatment seeking populations.
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