Biomedical subjects

A Koski-Jännes

Publications and source records attributed to A Koski-Jännes.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2001

Using self-help materials to motivate change at assessment for alcohol treatment.

The utility of a brief self-help booklet provided at assessment for alcohol treatment was evaluated using a quasi-experimental design (booklet provided to all clients for one month at a time, interspersed by one month of no booklets, for a 6-month period). While the booklet did not result in any significant reduction in client attrition, clients who received the booklet at their assessment were drinking less by the 6-month follow-up than those who did not receive the booklet. Limitations of this study, including the quasi-experimental design and the impact of the low baseline attrition rates, are discussed.

Adult↗

PubMed2001

Help-seeking timeline followback for problem drinkers: preliminary comparison with agency records of treatment contacts.

OBJECTIVE: A pilot study assessed the utility of the Timeline Followback (TLFB) method to collect information on help seeking. METHOD: Using the TLFB method, 34 clients (26 men) who had attended at least one session of an outpatient alcohol treatment program reported on treatment contacts, including any supplemental services (e.g., psychiatric care). TLFB reports of help seeking at that agency were compared with agency records of treatment contacts. RESULTS: Clients reported on their help-seeking behavior for a period of approximately 8 months after they had completed an initial assessment for the outpatient treatment. With regard to the number of outpatient sessions they attended, intraclass correlations and equivalence testing showed that the TLFB data were comparable to the agency records of treatment contacts. Analysis of week-to-week correspondence of the presence or absence of help-seeking episodes showed good agreement between TLFB and the agency records for most participants, although there was substantial variation. Degree of correspondence was not associated with the length of the recall period or individual differences (e.g., drinking pattern). Older participants, however, tended to have lower week-to-week concordance than did younger participants. CONCLUSIONS: These data provide preliminary support for the utility of a help-seeking TLFB instrument to assess addiction- and mental health-related contacts. This instrument may be especially useful in research in which collecting temporal patterns of help seeking is of interest (e.g., in studies examining factors influencing the delay in help seeking after relapse).

Adult↗

PubMed2000

Providing personalized assessment feedback for problem drinking on the Internet: a pilot project.

OBJECTIVE: This project developed an Internet program that conducts a brief assessment of an individual's drinking habits and then provides normative feedback comparing the user's drinking to that of others of the same gender and age group. The Internet program, "Try Our Free Drinking Evaluation," was based at the Addiction Research Foundation Internet web site (now at http://notes.camh.net/efeed.nsf/ newform). METHOD: A voluntary survey linked to the participant's feedback summary collected respondents' impressions of the program. RESULTS: During the trial period, the site received approximately 500 hits per month. While the feedback was generally well received, the weekly summary format was less credible to those individuals who drink less than once per week or whose consumption varies a great deal over time. CONCLUSIONS: Given these pilot results indicating that there is an audience for Internet-based interventions, the next step is to evaluate whether receiving such personalized feedback materials on the Internet leads to any change in drinking behavior by participants

Adolescent↗

PubMed1999

Narratives of recovery from addictive behaviours.

AIMS: The purpose of this study was to look for the ways in which people who have recovered from various addictions understand and present their change process. MATERIALS: The research material consisted of 51 autobiographical stories of people who had been able to quit their addiction to alcohol, multiple drugs, binge eating, smoking, sex and gambling. METHODS: The basic logic of each narrative was first defined. The narratives were then categorized according to what they presented as the key to recovery. Composite stories were then constructed and analysed with regard to their emotional, causal, moral and ethical meanings. FINDINGS: The analysis revealed five different story types among these self-narratives: the AA story, the growth story, the co-dependence story, the love story and the mastery story. All of them helped to make the addiction and recovery understandable, they released the protagonist from guilt and had a happy ending by which the values of the story were realized. Each story type was told predominantly by representatives of a particular gender and addiction. CONCLUSIONS: As there are several ways out of addictive behaviours there are also several ways to construe the change. People who try to quit addictive behaviours could be encouraged to make full use of the cultural stock of stories in creating an account that fits their own experience of defeating their particular addiction.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

PubMed1999

What is the price of perfection? The hidden costs of using detailed assessment instruments to measure alcohol consumption.

OBJECTIVE: This article describes results from a study investigating the effects of using long assessment instruments on attrition rates in mailed-out surveys. METHOD: Participants were randomly assigned to receive one of two versions of a mailed-out survey; one version incorporated a detailed assessment of drinking using the Timeline Follow back method (TLFB; n = 46) and the other employed a brief graduated frequency measure of alcohol consumption (n = 49). RESULTS: 29% fewer respondents who received the TLFB returned any of their survey materials as compared to those respondents who received just the graduated frequency measure (22% vs 51%). CONCLUSIONS: In some situations, e.g., mailed-out surveys, employing detailed survey instruments may not be justified as the increased respondent burden may result in increased attrition rates.

Alcohol Drinking↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Drinking-related locus of control as a predictor of drinking after treatment.

This study evaluated the predictive utility of the drinking-related control orientation for successful treatment outcome among Finnish inpatient alcoholics (N = 106, 16% women). Using the Drinking-Related Locus of Control (DRIE) scale by Keyson and Janda (unpublished; see Lettieri, Nelson, & Sayers, 1985), it aimed to discover to what extent the DRIE scores measured at the end of treatment predict (a) the timing and severity of the first drinking occasion after treatment, and (b) the 6 and 12 months' total treatment outcome of the sample. The DRIE scores correlated with the time to the first drinking occasion (r = -.27, p < .02). Internal subjects started to drink later (p < .004), drank less on the first occasion (p < .001), and continued for fewer days (p < .005) than external subjects. Moreover, internal orientation was more common among abstinent and external orientation among unimproved subjects during the first 6 (p < .02) and 12 months (p < .05) after treatment. The results thus support the beneficial role of internal control attributions.

Adult↗