A Review of Family Engagement Measures for Adolescent Substance Use Services

The engagement of family members in adolescent substance use treatment is vital for adolescent treatment completion and positive outcomes. Providers and researchers need quality measures of family engagement to identify early engagement problems, to determine the effectiveness of engagement interventions, and to test theories of family treatment engagement. The purpose of this study is to review existing measures of family engagement, and to assess their conceptual coverage and utility for adolescent substance use providers. Our initial search of measures published in peer-reviewed, English-language journals between 1998 and 2013 yielded 58 articles. Of these, eight articles described measures of family engagement in substance use and mental health treatment. Measures were compared across numerous categories including instrument format and administration procedures; measurement of behavioral, attitudinal, and affective domains; measurement reliability and validity; and the populations and treatment settings in which the measures were used. Of the eight measures, four contained items assessing attitudinal engagement, five assessed affective engagement, and six measures assessed behavioral engagement. Two measures had items that assessed all three domains. Half of the measures were clinician-rated and half were self-report. None of the measures included normative data or clinical cut-off scores. All of the measures were relatively brief (2–24 items), though only two measures were administered in substance use treatment settings. The results of this review highlight the paucity of family engagement measures that assess the multi-dimensional conceptualization of the construct. Implications for the continued conceptualization and measurement of family treatment engagement in adolescent substance-use treatment settings are discussed.