Measurement of gender-sensitive treatment for women in mixed-gender substance abuse treatment programs

Abstract

Background: Gender-sensitive (GS) substance abuse treatment services have emerged in response to the multidimensional profile of problems that women display upon admission to substance abuse treatment. The present study examines the extent to which treatment programs vary in GS programming for women in real-world mixed-gender treatment settings, where most women are treated.

Methods: Data were collected through site visits using semi-structured interviews with program directors, clinical directors, and counselors in 13 mixed-gender treatment programs from Washington State. Rasch modeling techniques were used to analyze the data.

Results: Naturally occurring variation was revealed within and across the treatment programs, and demonstrated that reliable measures of three GS domains (Grella, 2008) can be constructed despite a small number of programs.

Conclusions: This is the first study to quantify GS treatment for substance abusing women. The identified treatment services and practices and the way they clustered together to form scales have practical implications for researchers, service providers, clinicians, and policy makers. The scales can be used to study treatment outcomes and to evaluate the effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, and cost-benefit of GS programming for women.