ABSTRACT
An interesting finding of recent reviews of the substance abuse treatment literature is the degree to which our current knowledge is based on an assumption of generalizability that ignores ethnic group membership as a salient issue. Investigations which do attempt to account for ethnic factors frequently rely on general ethnic labels such as “Hispanic American,” “African American” or “Asian American” with little explanation of the label’s specific meaning or validity for the subjects of the particular study (Trimble, 1990; Trimble and Bolek, 1988; Tucker, 1985; Hanson, 1985; Iiyama, Matsunaga and Johnson, 1976). A majority of treatment effectiveness studies ignore the issue of ethnicity altogether and do not address its potential influence on the interpretation of results or their applicability to other groups and settings. Therefore, little is known about the degree to which such investigations are “culture bound” in the sense of being applicable to one or many culturally distinct groups or populations.
