‘Maybe this is the place for me:’ a qualitative study examining needs and length of stay in recovery house residents

ABSTRACT

The current qualitative study recruited 10 first-time Oxford House residents to participate in semi-structured interviews to explore their needs and factors affecting their length of stay. Interviews were analyzed using the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) approach. Findings suggest lower-resourced residents are more likely than higher-resourced residents to achieve the therapeutic dose due to higher need fulfillment and the drawbacks associated with group living minimized. For higher-resourced residents, increasing investment in the house through the development of friendships with housemates and participation in service activities could increase their length of stay by increasing their investment in the house. Implications are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Interpretative phenomenological analysis
• need fulfillment
• Oxford House
• qualitative
• recovery homes
• substance use disorders

Acknowledgments

We appreciate the assistance of the Center for Community Research Oxford House team, most notably Dr. Ed Stevens for his guidance and feedback during study design and data analysis and Kassandra Correa, Gentiana Dalipi, Lauren Frantz, and A’ShontiTiesha McKinney for their assistance with data transcription.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Human subjects

All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 (5). Informed consent was obtained from all participants included in the study.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (grant number AA022763) and DePaul University (Graduate Research Fund).