Exclusion Criteria in Alcohol-Related Services Research

几乎所有的酒精治疗结果研究都使用排除标准来确定哪些患者子样本将参与研究方案。 虽然这种排除有时是必要的科学，实际或道德的原因，他们可能会降低外部效度到一个未知的程度，创造一个不具代表性的研究样本。 本项目的目的是提供一个全面的评估排除标准，在现代历史的酒精治疗结果的研究。 具体来说，我们将研究在治疗结果研究中使用了哪些排除标准，它们如何影响结果的普遍性，它们是否不成比例地排除了弱势群体的成员（例如，非裔美国人，妇女）从研究参与，以及他们如何可能影响结果的结果。为了实现这些目标，将使用荟萃分析数据集（包括自1970年以来进行的701项酒精治疗结局研究）评估排除标准的性质和流行率。 这些数据中的排除标准将可操作化，并适用于六个大型“真实的世界”数据集，其中包括美国不同地区约20 000名寻求酒精问题治疗的个人。 通过这种分析程序，我们将能够确定现实世界中酒精患者的比例不通过典型的研究排除标准，以及在各种排除标准下，基线和随访特征（例如，结果）的排除患者不同于那些没有从结果研究中排除。

Almost all alcohol treatment outcome studies use exclusion criteria to determine which subsample of patients will participate in research protocol. Although such exclusions are sometimes necessary for scientific, practical or ethical reasons, they may lower external validity to an unknown extent by creating an unrepresentative research sample. The purpose of this project is to provide a comprehensive assessment of exclusion criteria employed during the modern history of alcohol treatment outcome research. Specifically, we will examine which exclusion criteria have been utilized in treatment outcome research, how they have affected the generalizability of results, whether they have disproportionately excluded members of vulnerable populations (e.g., African-Americans, women) from research participation, and how they may have affected outcome results. To pursue these objectives, the nature and prevalence of exclusion criteria will be assessed using a meta-analytic data set comprising 701 alcohol treatment outcome studies conducted since 1970. The exclusion criteria in this data will be operationalized and applied to six large "real world" data sets comprising about 20,000 individuals seeking treatment for alcohol problems in different parts of the United States. Through this analytic procedure, we will be able to determine what proportion of real-world alcohol patients do not pass typical research exclusion criteria, and whether, under various exclusion criteria, the baseline and follow-up characteristics (e.g., outcomes) of excluded patients differ from those not excluded from outcome research studies.