ABSTRACT
What precisely determines treatment success is still an open question in the field of addiction research. Alcohol dependence has been defined largely as a chronic relapsing disorder. Developments have been made in the last 20 years in treatment options for alcohol-dependent patients, providing a range of treatment goals and therapeutic modalities. The continued refinement of psychometric instruments to reliably assess alcoholism treatment outcome is crucial to these efforts to enhance treatment effectiveness. In contrast to more traditional procedures to define success as 100% continuous abstinence, newer and more innovative measures are available to determine psychosocial consequences and alcohol-related diagnoses, precise drinking patterns, and other important constructs such as post-treatment alcohol craving and stage of change. This chapter highlights various psychometric instruments used in large-scale clinical trials with the focus on practical applications for use in various clinic settings. Most of these psychometric instruments can be found in an alphabetical list in Chapter 44.
