DOI: 10.3886/icpsr02884
title: National Treatment Improvement Evaluation Study (NTIES), 1992-1997
title: Archival Version

description: The National Treatment Improvement Evaluation Study (NTIES)
is a congressionally-mandated five-year study of the impact of drug
and alcohol treatment on thousands of clients in hundreds of treatment
units that received public support from the Substance Abuse and Mental
Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), Center for Substance Abuse
Treatment (CSAT). NTIES inquired about the allocation of grant money
to treatment programs, to investigate what improvements were made with
these monies and how many and what type of clients were affected by
the grant awards. The NTIES project collected longitudinal data on a
purposive sample of clients in treatment programs receiving CSAT
demonstration grant funding. Client-level data were obtained at
treatment intake, at treatment exit, and 12 months after treatment
exit. Service delivery unit (SDU) administrative and clinician (SDU
staff) data were obtained at two time points, one year apart. Data
were collected across several important outcome areas, including drug
and alcohol use, physical and mental health, criminal activity, social
functioning, and employment. For a random sample of approximately half
of those interviewed, urine specimens were collected at follow-up to
corroborate clients' self-reports of substance abuse, in addition to
arrest records to validate self-reports. Substances covered in the
study included alcohol, analgesics, antianxiety medications,
anticonvulsants, antidepressants, antimanics, barbiturates, cocaine
(powder and crack), depressants, hallucinogens/psychedelics, heroin
and other opiates, illegal methadone, inhalants, marijuana/hashish,
methadone, methamphetamine/amphetamine and other stimulants,
narcotics, and sedatives.
description: NTIES measured the outcomes of treatment primarily through a
method known as a "before/after" or "pre/post" panel design. From a
universe of 698 SDUs, 82 SDUs were selected on a purposive basis for
participation in NTIES. Of the 82, clients from 78 SDUs (for an SDU
response rate of 95 percent) were included in the study. Clients were
interviewed three times: shortly after their first day of treatment,
when they left treatment, and then at 12 months after the end of
treatment. The response rate among clients was 85 percent, with 6,593
clients participating in the Intake Questionnaire (NRIQ), 5,274
participating in the Treatment Experience Questionnaire (NTEQ), and
5,388 participating in the Postdischarge Assessment Questionnaire
(NPAQ). Records abstraction was completed for 6,420 clients. The records
of those respondents participating in all three interviews are flagged
by the variable "IN_4411" in the NPAQ data file (Part 3). This is
referred to as the Outcome Analysis Sample and includes 4,411 records,
or 67 percent of those participating in the initial interview. Some
cases were excluded from the analysis sample for reasons other than
nonparticipation in the three interviews, such as when the treatment
exit date was missing or undetermined, length of the interval for the
follow-up interview was inappropriate (less than 5 or more than 16
months), or the client was incarcerated for most or all of the follow-up
period. Of the SDUs sampled for the NTIES outcome analysis, 44 percent
were Target Cities programs, 38 percent were Critical Populations
programs, and 23 percent were Criminal Justice programs. Criminal
Justice SDUs that were funded as part of the CSAT 1990-1992
demonstrations were purposely oversampled as part of the NTIES
evaluation design. Nearly half of the sampled SDUs were non-methadone
outpatient programs, and about one-quarter were long-term residential
programs.
description: Datasets: 
DS0: Study-Level Files
DS1: NTIES Research Intake Questionnaire (NRIQ)
DS2: NTIES Treatment Experience Questionnaire (NTEQ)
DS3: NTIES Postdischarge Assessment Questionnaire (NPAQ)
DS4: NTIES Patient Record Abstraction Form (NPRAF)
DS5: NTIES Clinical Unit Data (NCLU)
DS6: Merged Data Files for Online Analysis
description: Substance abuse treatment units in the United States
receiving funding from CSAT under one of three demonstration grants:
Target Cities, Critical Populations, and Criminal Justice.
description: Data were collected by the National Opinion Research
Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago with assistance from Research
Triangle Institute, Research Triangle Park, NC. The NTIES public use
files were prepared by NORC and deposited by Caliber
Associates, Arlington, VA, under the National Evaluation Data Services
(NEDS) contract with CSAT.To fully utilize the NTIES study design
for analytic purposes, the combination of records from two or more of
the client-level data files is necessary. Some combination of intake
records (NRIQ), treatment exit records (NTEQ), treatment follow-up
records (NPAQ), treatment services abstracts (NPRAF), or clinical unit
records (NCLU) is needed to adequately assess changes in client
behaviors over time. Client records can be matched between data files
using the CASEID variable.To protect the privacy of respondents,
all variables that could be used to identify individuals have been
removed from or edited in the public use file. Because of the disclosure
alterations, estimates derived from the public use file will not always
exactly match the detailed results published in SAMHSA reports, but the
alterations should not affect analytic uses of the data.Due to the
disclosure alterations, there are slight inconsistencies in the
categorical ranges for "hours worked" variables between the NRIQ and
NPAQ files.Individuals served by CSAT grants were generally from
vulnerable and underserved populations (minorities, pregnant women,
youth, public housing residents, welfare recipients, and those in the
criminal justice system). Results from the NTIES may not generalize to
all clients in substance abuse treatment or to all kinds of service
delivery units.