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While there has been a growth in recent years in recovery research, much of this has been from the US and there is very little comparative research in this area. This paper describes the rationale, conceptual foundations and methods for a prospective, multi-country, cohort study aimed to map pathways to recovery from problematic illicit drug use, with a specific focus on gender differences in recovery pathways. Our study combines qualitative and quantitative components and examines the impact of recovery policy on the accessibility and viability of recovery pathways in England, Scotland, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Additionally, the paper describes five processes through which mechanisms for behaviour change for recovery may be triggered. This study will provide opportunities for linking recovery outcome research with analyses of national recovery policies, while also addressing the gap in literature around female pathways to recovery.

She has a broad range of research interests including addiction and recovery, violence, gambling and comparative studies.

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Data reliability and validity are major methodological concerns in cross-national analyses of crime. Despite the large literature on cross-national homicide rates, there is little agreement on which source of data provides the most reliable estimates. In addition, few studies have examined the potential threat to validity posed by unclassified deaths. Through a description of trends over time as well as multivariate analyses, the current study aims to shed some light on these questions by (1) assessing the reliability of cross-national homicide data from the United Nations and the World Health Organization, and (2) investigating the impact of unclassified deaths on the validity of WHO data. Findings indicate that UN and WHO homicide rates (n=56) differ in magnitude but produce similar outcomes. Drawing on wellknown correlates of cross-national homicide rates, the UN data provide more robust results and produce statistical models with less error. We find that WHO data are more stable and reliable over time, and better suited for longitudinal analyses. Findings also suggest that analyses drawing on WHO homicide data should not disregard unclassified deaths because their inclusion produces better fitted statistical models and provides a closer estimate of the true number of homicides.