Journal of Addiction Research & Therapy
Open Access

Abstract

T he aim of the present study was to develop an indigenous scale to measure relapse proneness among drug addicts. Study was conducted in three steps: Initial pool of items (in Urdu) was generated for the construct (relapse) through focus groups followed by themes generation and item construction. Data was collected from 67 drug addicts. The scale showed very high reliability (α=.90). Sample size was empirically tested by KMO and Bartlett test (KMO = .76). The principal component analysis yielded 9 factor solution with eigen values >1.0. According to scree plot, there were two (well defined, interpretable, clear and accurate) factors out of 9. Two factor solution was retained following scree plot; overt determinants (high risk situations and abstinence violation effect) and covert determinants (emotional changes and beliefs). Some of the items showed dual/multiple loadings, but this scenario is not surprising, as the items were designed to measure the single construct (i.e., relapse), so the variables have inter-correlations among themselves. The final version of the scale contained 26 items. The response format of relapse proneness scale was decided to be 5 point Likert rating scale. High score on the scale represents more proneness towards relapse and low score represent less proneness towards relapse. Validity analyses are being carried out. It hence the structure will be interpreted keeping in view the inclusion criteria and theoretical relevance of the variable; otherwise items will be excluded in the further analysis

Biography

Qudsia Nashee has completed her BS (Hons) in 2011 from department of Applied Psychology, Punjab University and at present she is Mphill scholar at Punjab University. She has been serving as trainee in government hospital and as psychologist in private hospital in drug addiction rehabilitation and psychiatric services for more than two years and she has published 2 papers in reputed journals.