Motivational predictors of alcoholics' responses to inpatient treatment

Abstract

Motivational patterns of 60 alcoholic inpatients were assessed by use of the Interview Questionnaire (IntQ) and were related to staff judgments regarding patients' success or failure in completing an inpatient treatment program. The IntQ was administered soon after intake, one month later, and at the end of treatment. It elicits patients' idiographic accounts of their current concerns and patients' nomothetic ratings of them on variables related to commitment, active participation in goal striving, and goal valence, value, expectancy, and imminence. Structural variables demonstrated significant stability over the first two IntQ administrations, whereas goal content and affect variables did not. Stepwise discriminant analysis of treatment outcome as well as correlational analyses indicated that successful outcomes were significantly related to smaller size of community, concerns appetitive to treatment, lack of concerns about avoiding alcohol, and expecting goal attainments to occur sooner. Goal orientations toward treatment and alcohol were related to other variables in ways consistent with the view that recovery from alcohol is associated with having emotionally positive alternative goals.