1. Research Question
•In court mandated treatment, what impact do social supports have on treatment outcomes?
Methods
Survey Design
•A bivariate, qualitative interview survey of questions taken from secondary data collected
during intake interviews conducted at the Richmond Behavioral Health Authority (RBHA),
located in Richmond, Virginia.
•The survey, which was conducted between March 24, 2011 and October 31, 2013, was
administered to 210 clients of RBHA (115 men and 95 women
Data Collection
•Agency staff and interns collected data responses from drug court participants during
intake interviews and compiled relevant treatment information for study participants after
discharge.
•During the intake, the interviewer asked clients the survey questions and recorded client's’
responses by handwriting them on the survey form.
•After the collection of responses, the information was added to a comprehensive data set
to be used by researchers involved.
•Because of the purposive nature of this one time interview, the sampling method adds to
the consistency of data.
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African American vs. Caucasian Social Supports:
Impact on Drug Court Participants
Tenicia Bartly, Leslie Guilfoyle, Chanda Hannah, Theresa Reardon, & Benjamin Wood
Dependent Variable
•The dependent variables are connection with self-help groups, engagement in religious activities and
other non-religious support groups are measured as intervals, from 0-99 occurrences in the past thirty
days.
•The use of correlation as well as t-test measurement are used in order to determine a relationship
between the connection of support groups and completion of treatment in the thirty days prior to
beginning court-mandated treatment and successful completion of treatment.
Independent Variable
•The independent variable is treatment completion.
•This level of measurement is nominal, and focus for this variable is graduated or not graduated.
Interpretation of Results
•While the a nominal level of measurement for treatment termination was used, the measurement
does not accurately reflect the different treatment outcomes that may be experienced.
•A future direction for this line of research would be to study the differences between persons who
had high levels of activities that promote social supports before treatment, and clients who had come
to treatment without those connections.
Limitations
•One weakness for this research proposal is the source of the data. The use of secondary data
cannot answer the specific question that has been proposed.
•The authors used questions and responses that were already collected, and attempted to fit the
available survey questions to the definition of activities that promote social supports in this
proposal.
•Another limitation of this study hoped to show that there is a positive correlation in study
participants’ previous involvement in activities that promote engagement in social supports and the
rate of treatment completion.
Discussion
•While the study focuses on court-mandated clients, it would be interesting to see if there are
any correlations for clients who seek treatment voluntarily.
•It might be hard to tell if there is any external validity in this research related to clients who
are court-mandated for treatment as opposed to those who are voluntarily seeking treatment.
•Also interesting was the finding that, while more women were found to graduate drug court
than men, more Caucasian women had graduated than African American women. This may be
due to the way in which programs are set up to favor Caucasians, but more studies are needed
to verify this important finding.
Independent Samples T-Test Comparing
Mean of Graduated and Not Graduated
Independent Samples T-Test Comparing Means of
Attendance at Mutual Support Groups
Thank you to Richmond Behavioral Health Authority for the data used in this research.
Comparison: African American vs. Caucasian Graduates