Recovering Alcoholic Families

Abstract

The Family Recovery Project looked at the efficacy of quantitative versus qualitative measures as they identified/revealed changes in alcoholic families during the recovery process. Fifty-two recovering alcoholics and their spouses took a battery of objective tests (MMPI-2, FACES-II, FAM-III, and FILE-C), as well as subjective tests (semi-structured interview and questionnaire) with the hope that this multi-perspective approach would provide an in-depth look at the recovery process as experienced by alcoholics and co-alcoholics. The expectation was that scores on the quantitative measures would change during the recovery process and reflect such things as breakdown of denial, growth, new learning, etc., as the family went through the stages of recovery. Instead, the quantitative data remained static over time and with the significant exceptions, scores were within the normal ranges. This finding is in sharp contrast with the qualitative data that revealed the developmental nature of recovery, with early recovery demonstrating chaos and crisis that diminished over time. For this population, the quantitative results are misleading and inadequate in understanding the recovery process.

Key Words:

• Family recovery
• qualitative versus quantitative methods
• limitations of family measures
• changes in recovery over time