Reasons for Not Drinking Among Veterans Seeking Treatment for Alcohol Dependence in a Partial Day Hospital

Prior research on motivation to quit drinking or to enter treatment for alcohol problems has shown that people may report reasons that are internally driven, externally driven, or some combination of the two types. In addition, the decision to quit drinking or enter treatment often follows cognitive and affective decision-making processes in which the pros and cons of continued drinking versus change are weighed. Cognitive theory and research suggest that accessibility of information depends at least in part on how recently or frequently the information was accessed, and that people process self-relevant information more deeply than non-self-relevant information. On the basis of this prior research, we hypothesized that people who reported high levels of internal motivation to quit drinking or to enter treatment would score higher on a measure of accessibility of information (the Decisional Balance Fluency Test or DBFT) and on a measure of depth of processing (the Memory for Alcohol Consequences Task or MACT) than those who reported lower levels of internal motivation. Forty-five alcohol dependent male veterans completed the DBFT, the MACT, and several self-report questionnaires, including the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT), the Reasons for Quitting Questionnaire (RQQ), the Treatment Motivation Questionnaire (TMQ), and the Alcohol and Drug Consequences Questionnaire (ADCQ). DBFT and MACT scores were regressed on self-reported internal and external motivation on the RQQ and the TMQ. Results indicated that internal motivation scores on the RQQ predicted MACT scores but not DBFT scores, and that the TMQ did not predict DBFT or MACT scores. A secondary hypothesis examined the relationship between motivation to quit drinking and motivation to enter treatment; findings indicated that these types of motivation were not highly correlated and are not appropriate proxies for one another. Finally, post hoc tests were performed to assess the psychometrics of two fairly new measures used in the study. The psychometric properties of the DBFT were problematic in this study; however, the psychometric properties of the MACT were reasonably good. Further research is recommended to develop greater understanding of the relationships among the constructs and theory explored in this study.