Self-reports of substance use (marijuana, cocaine, alcohol, methamphetamine, benzodiazepenes, opioids, and other illicit drugs) will also be documented by the research assistant via the Substance Use Calendar. Similar to the Form-90, which has been shown to be a reliable and valid instrument for monitoring substance use and other outcomes in longitudinal studies (Miller & DelBoca, 1994), the Substance Use Calendar instrument assesses substance use on a daily basis and allows a flexible, continuous evaluation of substance use. It also allows for collection of data points for participants who miss evaluation sessions and thus prevents missing data and problems associated with gaps or overlap of datapoints. The use of the calendar format prompts participants to remember key dates.

The SDSS is a semi-structured, clinician-administered interview that assesses DSM-IV dependence and abuse and ICD-10 harmful use for alcohol and other drugs for the previous 30 days. It assesses frequency and severity of symptoms. The SDSS consists of 7-10 screening questions for alcohol and each drug category and 13 symptom items. The SDSS is useful in clinical settings because it has been designed to provide an indication of recent severity of substance abuse and dependence on alcohol, specifically by drug type. It also offers unique advantages as a measure of treatment outcome that may be more sensitive to changes in clinical status than outcome measures routinely used, such as self-report substance use, urinalysis results, or diagnostic status. In research settings, the SDSS can be used as a baseline and follow-up measure in alcoholism and drug abuse treatment studies and other studies requiring quantification of severity keyed specifically to DSM-IV or ICD-10 criteria. The SDSS is available in pencil-and-paper and interview formats and can be administered by a clinician in 30-45 minutes. In a study comparing 5 diagnostic instruments (SCID, CIDI-2, DIS-IV, DSM-IV Checklist, SDSS) for suitability for use in the CTN Clinical Trials Network, the SDSS was ranked 5th (Forman et al 2004). An 11-item "Lite" version of this scale has also been used in CTN research.

The Subjective Drug Value procedure (SDV) involves a series of independent, theoretical forced choices between the drug administered and different monetary values. Subjects are asked to choose between receiving another dose of the same drug to take home or an envelope containing a specified amount of money, but they do not receive either the drug or the money described in the choices. Depending on the answer to each question, the monetary value in the next question is either higher or lower. At the end of the procedure (generally 6 questions), the procedure estimates the crossover point at which the subject is indifferent between choosing drug and choosing money. The crossover point is the proxy index of reinforcing efficacy that will be used as an outcome measure for estimating abuse potential. This test is adapted from a similar procedure utilized by Griffiths and colleagues (Griffiths, Troisi et al. 1993; Griffiths, Rush et al. 1996).

The Study Questionnaire Substance Use is a self-report assessment of the relationship between smoking and stimulant use as perceived by the respondent.

The Stroop Color-Word Test (SCWT; Stroop, 1935) is one of the oldest and most commonly used tests in psychology for examining executive functions and response inhibition. In the standard form of the task, a participant is asked to (1) read words that are the names of colors (i.e., word reading), (2) name the color of ink patches (i.e., color naming), and (3) name the color of the ink in which incongruent color words are printed.

Stimulant Selective Severity Assessment (SSSA; adapted from Kampman et al, 1998). The SSSA is an 18-item clinician-rated instrument assessing the signs and symptoms of stimulant (cocaine, methamphetamine and other stimulants) abstinence. It is derived from the Cocaine Selective Severity Assessment, which contains items that are most frequently associated with early cocaine abstinence. The items are rated on a scale from 0-7 (with higher scores indicating greater intensity or frequency) with a maximum possible score of 112. The CSSA, from which the SSSA is adapted, has been shown to have good inter-rater reliability (correlation coefficient = 0.92, p

Stimulant Craving Questionnaire-Brief (STCQ-Brief; adapted from Sussner et al, 2006). The STCQ-Brief is a 10-item self-report measure derived from the 10-item Cocaine Craving Questionnaire-Brief and the original 46-item Cocaine Craving Questionnaire-Now (Tiffany et al, 1998). The STCQ-Brief assesses current craving for stimulants (cocaine, methamphetamine and other stimulants) using a seven-point scale, with answers ranging from “strongly disagree” to strongly agree”. The CCQ-Brief, from which the STCQ-Brief is adapted, has high internal consistency, with Cronbach’s alpha ranging from 0.87 (Paliwal et al, 2008) to 0.90 (Sussner et al, 2006). The instrument also has good construct validity and has shown to correlate well with other craving measures (Paliwal et al, 2008).

The primary purpose of the State Administrator survey is to collect information regarding policies, regulations and funding related to Hepatitis C.

The SOCRATES (Miller and Tonigan 1996) is a 20-item self-report measure of clients’ readiness to change their substance use behaviors. Isenhardt (Isenhart 1994) used a modified version of the SOCRATES that includes references to drug use with a broader range of substance abusers. The current version has three subscales: Taking steps, Recognition of a problem, and Ambivalence. The instrument is intended to assess which of these stages the individual is in at the time of the assessment.

Quitting drug use will be measured using a modification of the Motivation Scales, including Drug Use Problems, Desire for Help, and Treatment Readiness, from the data instruments developed by Simpson et al. for the Drug Abuse Treatment, Assessment, and Research Project (Simpson, Joe, Broome et al., 1997). The instrument, SOC, has excellent predictive validity relative to treatment entry (Booth, Kwiatkowski, Iguchi, Pinto, & John, 1998) and its test-retest reliability is 90%. It will serve as a measure of the TA Intervention’s ability to increase motivation for treatment.