Prediction of outcome in inpatient alcoholics

This study used clinical data that was gathered at intake to predict the 1-year outcome after treatment for 464 men alcoholics. Multiple stepwise regressions were applied to the total sample and subgroups with primary alcoholism (N = 374), primary drug misuse (N = 55) or primary antisocial personality disorder (N = 35) in order to evaluate the degree to which combinations of intake variables could explain the variance on the two different outcome measures. R2 values were generally low (7-25% of variance explained) and were reduced even further when validation and cross-validation procedures were applied to the larger subgroups. Outcome, as measured by abstention, tended to be more poorly predicted than outcome using the more complex Clinical Outcome Score (COS). The results indicate that it may be important for future studies to clearly identify primary diagnoses and specific measures of outcome, and look for other, perhaps more subtle, measurable factors at intake which may better correlate with short-term treatment results.