Assessing the Needs of Substance Abusing Women: Psychometric Data on the Psychosocial History

The Psychosocial History (PSH) is a comprehensive multidisciplinary interview designed to assess the status, history, and needs of women in substance abuse treatment. The PSH retains the fundamental scoring structure of the Addiction Severity Index (ASI), while adding supplemental questions considered clinically useful and relevant for predicting outcomes. The present study examined the psychometric properties and general utility of both instruments with a sample of women enrolled in substance abuse treatment. Initially, the instruments were tested independently and found to have excellent test–retest reliability and acceptable internal consistency. A reliability trial between the instruments found that the composite scores (CS) of the ASI and PSH yielded satisfactory correlations among four of the six CS domains. The PSH had higher CS scores than the ASI across domains, which may reflect the comprehensive nature of the PSH items that prompt greater disclosure of problems and needs. Validity analyses showed significant correlations of PSH and ASI psychiatric CSs with Symptom Checklist-90-Revised totals. These results suggest that the PSH yields reliable and valid assessment data similar to the ASI. Moreover, the PSH provides a more comprehensive assessment than the ASI in the area of pregnancy, family issues, and victimization.