Abstract
OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to explore factors associated with
employment outcomes of veterans with substance use disorders.
METHODS: Chi-squared automatic interaction detector (CHAID) was used to
explore how interactions between participant entry characteristics and treatment
participation variables relate to employment outcome. Participants included 46,641
veterans with substance use disorders from the Veterans Health Administration’s
Compensated Work Therapy (CWT) Programs during the period of 1993 to 2005 The data used in
this study were administrative archival data routinely collected by the Northeast Program
Evaluation Center (NEPEC) from all CWT programs nationwide.
RESULTS: Factors most highly associated with competitive employment outcome
included greater treatment intensity, defined as higher weekly mean earnings and longer
treatment duration; higher vocational functioning prior to admission defined as a shorter
length of time since employed for at least a month; and participation in a transitional
work experience position on the VA grounds.
CONCLUSION: The CHAID analysis was able to construct an optimal model using
participant entry characteristics and treatment participation variables to explain the
variance in the dependent variable, employment outcome. Through the process of
segmentation of the sample into mutually exclusive homogeneous subgroups with different
probabilities of positive outcomes, CHAID provided detailed information about interactions
between the participant entry characteristics and treatment participation variables on the
one hand and the outcome variables on the other.
