National Treatment Improvement Evaluation Study (NTIES-1992-1997)

Parent Series Details:

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Study Details:
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.

Study Scope

Time period: 
1992/1997
Collection date: 
1992/1997
Geographic coverage : 
United States
Data types: 
survey data
Universe: 
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.
Notes: 
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.
Subject Terms: 
  • AIDS
  • criminal histories
  • drug treatment
  • employment
  • health status
  • HIV
  • mental health
  • program evaluation
  • social behavior
  • substance abuse
  • treatment outcomes
  • treatment programs

Study Methodology

Sample: 
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.
Versions: 
  • 2009-02-18: New files were added. These files included one or more of the following: Stata setup, SAS transport (CPORT), SPSS system, Stata system, SAS supplemental syntax, and Stata supplemental syntax files, and tab-delimited ASCII data file.
  • 2005-11-04: On 2005-03-14 new files were added to one or more datasets. These files included additional setup files as well as one or more of the following: SAS program, SAS transport, SPSS portable, and Stata system files. The metadata record was revised 2005-11-04 to reflect these additions.
  • 2004-03-22: Corrections to variable labels were made in the codebooks and data definition statements for Parts 1 and 3.
  • 2001-05-29: Part 5, the NTIES Clinical Unit Data (NCLU), was added to the data collection. The NCLU file contains data related to the service delivery unit (SDU) in which the client received treatment. Minor revisions were also made to the codebooks for Parts 1 through 4.
Extent of processing: 
  • Performed consistency checks.
  • Standardized missing values.
  • Created online analysis version with question text.
  • Performed recodes and/or calculated derived variables.
  • Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Study Bibliography

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