Measuring Recovery: The Addiction Recovery Questionnaire (ARQ)

ABSTRACT

The Addiction Recovery Questionnaire (ARQ) is derived from the views of service users, their families and friends. Data were collected from 305 participants in the UK general population and addiction services, asked to self-identify as being in one of three groups: treatment, recovery or well-functioning, and complete the ARQ. Regression and latent class analyses were used to determine that the ARQ could distinguish the three groups. Clinically significant change values were established. Although there are some discrepancies in the way individuals define their recovery, self-identification was found to be broadly valid. The ARQ is able to assign people to different stages of recovery from addiction, and provides an instrument for monitoring change and measuring outcomes in the key components of lifestyle, involvement with substance use and self-confidence.

KEYWORDS:

• Addiction recovery
• outcome measurement
• quality of life
• addiction recovery questionnaire
• clinically significant change

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Mark Bisson and Keri Lui who undertook the data collection and to all those who took the time to participate in the study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available at the result4addiction website on the comparison of recovery scales page and can be found at: https://www.result4addiction.net/recovery

Ethical approval

Ethical approval for the study was obtained from Yorkshire & the Humber - Bradford Leeds Research Ethics Committee (REC 17/YH/0198).

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/07347324.2023.2167529

Additional information

Funding

Data collection was supported by University of Leeds medical students undertaking an Extended Student-led Research or Evaluation Project (Project # 17-SUP-3445 Title: Addiction Recovery) and a senior nurse. First author was funded by Public Health, York to undertake an MSC at the University of York. Supervision of the students and oversight of the clinical aspects of the project was from the two Addiction Consultants (3^rd and 4^th authors) within allocated research time