Replication of psychometric properties and predictive validity of the Important People Drug and Alcohol Interview

Abstract

Aims: Social support is a predictor of alcohol and drug use. The Important People Drug and Alcohol (IPDA) interview and its predecessor, the Important People and Activities (IPA) measure, have been used to demonstrate this predictive relationship. The purpose of this study was to replicate the findings from Zywiak et al. (2009) in a sample of probationers with substance use disorders.Design: Analyses mirrored those done previously to replicate the associations between social networks and substance use. The IPDA was used to assess social networks before and after incarceration. Form-90 (Tonigan, Miller, & Brown, 1997) was used to measure substance use.Participants: Individuals were recruited from a local probation office. Information was collected from a sample of 50 male probationers with substance use disorders recently released from jail. Conclusions:Results showed that many of the previous findings from Zywiak et al. (2009) were similar to those found in the current study. This adds to the evidence that the IPDA is a promising measure of social networks and examining how those networks relate to substance use outcomes. The use of the IPDA may be beneficial for both research and clinical purposes, while evaluating individuals with alcohol and other drug use disorders.

A Pilot Study of a Brief Motivational Intervention for Incarcerated Drinkers

“…The IPDA is a revised version of the Important People and Activities interview (Beattie & Longabaugh, 1999) that asks participants to list members in their social network, as well as the importance, supportiveness, drinking and drug use status, and support for substance use treatment of each network member (Owens & Zywiak, in press; Zywiak et al, 2009). Longabaugh et al (1998) found that the earlier version, the Important People Interview, had high 2-3 day test-retest reliability ( r = 0.95).…”

Pretreatment social network characteristics relate to increased risk of dropout and unfavorable outcomes among women in a residential treatment setting for substance use

“…A number of social network indices can be derived from the IPDA and have been previously validated (Owens & Zywiak, 2016;Zywiak et al, 2009). We calculated nine social network characteristics: 1) number of people in the social network, 2) number of people in daily contact with the participant, 3) the average importance rating of the four social network members rated the highest, 4) number of alcohol users in social network, 5) number of drug users in social network, 6) network's AOD involvement, 7) general social support, 8) treatment support, and 9) support for AOD use.…”

“…The structure and complexity of social networks of individuals with SUD have so far been largely studied through self-report. The Important (Owens & Zywiak, 2016;Zywiak et al, 2009) and, by far, the most commonly used methods of social network evaluation in the SUD realm (Stone, Jason, Light, & Stevens, 2016). For example, IPA and IPI were included in the most prominent large-scale studies on the treatment of alcohol problems, projects MATCH (Zywiak, Longabaugh, & Wirtz, 2002) and COMBINE (Longabaugh, Philip, William, & Stephanie, 2010).…”

“…However, the qualities of the alters in the network might be important for substance use, because AOD use patterns among those alters can make AOD use more acceptable or available. Indeed, research on individuals with SUD has sometimes shown that larger (daily) network size is linked to better mental health and quality of life (Best & Lubman, 2017;Muller, Skurtveit, & Clausen, 2017), fewer days with drug use before treatment entry (Zywiak et al, 2009; but see Owens & Zywiak, 2016), and reduced AOD use severity and number of days with use following treatment (Zywiak et al, 2009). On the other hand, a higher number of AOD users in a network has been related to worse AOD treatment outcomes (Best & Lubman, 2017;Petrakis & Simpson, 2017;Tracy et al, 2016).…”