AA Social Dynamics: The context for mobilizing behavior

描述(由申请人提供)：戒酒者互助会(AA)是迄今为止最常见的酗酒者求助来源。即使在那些接受酒精中毒治疗的人中，大多数人后来也参加了戒酒互助会。在记录与AA相关的益处的性质和大小方面取得了重大进展，并取得了逐步进展，以更好地了解导致节欲增加的AA变化机制。Tonigan博士的K02续签申请要求提供5年的资金，以启动一项新的程序性AA研究，将AA的社会动态与更成熟的AA行为改变机制研究相结合，以更好地了解戒酒后的短期和长期康复。这一综合的实现将为从业者提供生态上有效和临床上有意义的信息，以帮助客户发起和维持再生障碍性贫血的参与。申请书中明确了三个职业目标，这三个目标由申请者正在进行的和计划中的AA相关研究直接支持并密切结合。启动这一新的AA研究所必需的知识增长包括社会动态理论和实践的基础和高级教学培训，以及多层次统计分析的强化培训，以调查嵌套的、分层安排的数据结构的前瞻性假设。 职业发展计划还包括与DRS Moos和Stout、社会群体动态和HLM统计方面的专家进行频繁和密集的磋商。虽然指导AA调查人员的总体目标在续签申请中保持不变，但拟议的指导目标反映了日益成熟的互助研究领域不断发展的需求。因此，Tonigan博士建议建立一个R13机制，以支持为期3年的AA特定会议，每次会议都将产生一本研究专著。对研究计划进行排序，以巩固知识成果，并为第三年新的R01应用提供试点数据。描述了实现这些目标的五项研究活动，包括组织一个由NIAAA资助的四项研究的联盟，以生成关于AA满足社会动态的认知的大型数据集。然后描述了计划中的R01，其中包括从AA招募和治疗，在24个月内进行7波评估，并测试关于感知的AA会议社交动态对动员AA相关行为变化的主要和中介影响的前瞻性假设。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is by far the most commonly sought source of help for alcoholism. Even among those receiving alcoholism treatment, a majority subsequently attend AA. Significant gains have been made in documenting the nature and magnitude of AA-related benefit, and incremental advances have occurred to better understand the mechanisms of change in AA that produce increased abstinence. Dr. Tonigan's K02 renewal application requests 5-years of funding to launch a new line of programmatic AA-research, one that integrates AA social dynamics with the more established study of behavior change mechanisms in AA to better understand short and long-term recovery from alcoholism. The achievement of this synthesis will provide practitioners with ecologically valid and clinically meaningful information to help clients initiate and sustain AA participation. Three career objectives are specified in the application, which are directly supported by and closely integrated with, the applicant's ongoing and planned AA-related research. Knowledge gains that are necessary to launch this new line of AA research include basic and advanced didactic training in social dynamic theory and practice, and intensive training in multilevel statistical analyses to investigate prospective hypotheses with nested, hierarchically arranged data structures. The career development plan also includes frequent and intensive consultations with Drs Moos and Stout, experts in social group dynamics and HLM-based statistics. While the general objective of mentoring AA investigators remains intact in the renewal application, proposed mentoring objectives reflect the evolving needs of the maturing field of mutual-help research. Dr. Tonigan thus proposes to secure an R13 mechanism to support 3-years of AA-specific conferences, each of which will generate a research monograph. The research plan is sequenced to consolidate knowledge gains and to provide pilot data for a new R01 application in year 3. Five research activities are described to achieve these goals, including organizing a consortium of four NIAAA funded studies to generate large data sets on perceptions of AA meeting social dynamics. A planned R01 is then described, one that includes recruitment from AA and treatment, 7 waves of assessments over 24 months, and testing of prospective hypotheses about the main and mediating effects of perceived AA meeting social dynamics on mobilizing AA-related behavior change.