The purpose of this proposal is to abbreviate and revise the Psychosocial History (PSH) a comprehensive multidimensional semi- structured interview designed to assess women seeking substance abuse treatment. The PSH was developed as an alternative version of the Addiction Severity Index (ASI), a widely used instrument that assesses patient problems and matches patient needs to treatment services. The PSH has attracted national and international interest from women's substance abuse treatment providers and researchers. However, the time required to administer the current PSH has limited its utility. In order to meet the needs of clinical and research settings, the length of the interview must be reduced to a set of essential items and satisfactory psychometric properties of scales for the revised and abbreviated PSH must be established. As part of the process to reduce the number of items in the PSH, summary indices of problem severity i.e., Clinical Factor Scales, will be developed. Internal consistency and concurrent validity of the Clinical Factors Scales in the revised PSH will be evaluated in a pilot study of 50 treatment seeking women. Phase II will include a large multisite psychometric study of the revised PSH as well as the development of a comprehensive user's package.
