Beliefs about the empirical support of drug abuse treatment interventions: A survey of outpatient treatment providers

This study assessed substance abuse treatment providers’ beliefs about empirically supported treatments (ESTs) to determine if providing information about empirical support for interventions would change beliefs. Treatment providers (N=136) completed an interview regarding five interventions with varied empirical support: contingency management (CM), motivational interviewing (MI), relapse prevention (RP), 12-step approaches (TSA), and verbal confrontation (VC). Participants then read primers describing empirical support for each intervention prior to completing a repeat interview. Overall, providers reported positive beliefs about ESTs. Baseline beliefs about empirical support for each intervention were inflated relative to that of expert raters except for CM. After reading the primers, beliefs about efficacy changed in the direction of the experts for all interventions except MI, but continued to be inflated except for CM. Willingness to utilize interventions increased for RP, MI, and CM and decreased for TSA and VC, but remained higher than warranted by empirical support.