The psychometric properties of the Stages of Change Readiness and Treatment Eagerness Scale (SOCRATES) in a clinical sample of active duty military service members

The increasing prominence of the construct of readiness to change in the field of substance abuse treatment has led to the development of instruments designed to assess the construct. We examined the psychometric properties of one such instrument, the Stages of Change Readiness and Treatment Eagerness Scale (SOCRATES), in a sample of treatment-seeking, active duty, U.S. military service members diagnosed with alcohol and/or drug dependence. A principal components analysis of the items was consistent with the tridimensional structure of the SOCRATES found among treatment-seeking civilians but resulted in a 14-item scale, as opposed to the 19-item version found for civilians. Normative data, in the form of means and decile rankings for the SOCRATES subscales, for substance-dependent military patients are provided to complement those available for civilian patients. Future research should examine the concurrent and predictive validity of the scale.