AA Social Dynamics: The context for mobilizing behavior

描述（由申请人提供）：匿名酗酒者（AA）是迄今为止最常见的酗酒帮助来源。即使在那些接受酗酒治疗的人中，大多数人后来参加了AA。在记录AA相关益处的性质和程度方面已经取得了重大进展，并且在更好地理解AA产生更多禁欲的变化机制方面取得了渐进性进展。Tonigan博士的K02续期申请要求5年的资金，以启动一个新的AA研究项目，该项目将AA社会动力学与AA行为改变机制的更成熟研究相结合，以更好地了解短期和长期的酗酒恢复。这一综合成果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AA参与。申请中指定了三个职业目标，这些目标直接得到申请人正在进行的和计划中的AA相关研究的支持，并与之紧密结合。知识增益是必要的，推出这一新的AA研究线，包括社会动态理论和实践的基础和先进的教学培训，并在多层次统计分析的强化培训，以调查与嵌套的，分层排列的数据结构的前瞻性假设。 职业发展计划还包括与Moos博士和Stout博士进行频繁和深入的协商，他们是社会群体动态和基于高级别管理委员会的统计方面的专家。虽然指导AA调查人员的总体目标在更新申请中保持不变，但拟议的指导目标反映了互助研究成熟领域不断变化的需求。因此，Tonigan博士建议建立一个R13机制，以支持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3年的新R01应用提供试验数据。五个研究活动，以实现这些目标，包括组织一个财团的四个NIAAA资助的研究，以产生大数据集的AA会议的社会动态的看法。然后描述了一个计划的R01，其中包括从AA和治疗招募，在24个月内进行7波评估，并测试关于感知AA会议社会动态对调动AA相关行为变化的主要和中介作用的前瞻性假设。

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.