Profiles of drug use behavior change for adolescents in treatment

This study was designed to replicate and extend previous research on post-treatment responding by identifying trajectories of change on the basis of an empirical classification strategy and to examine predictors of those change trajectories identified. Treatment response was examined for 232 adolescents with substance use disorders who participated in one of two randomized controlled trials evaluating family and cognitive behavioral interventions in an outpatient treatment setting. Cluster analysis was used to identify, empirically, homogeneous groups of individuals who display common internally consistent patterns of change over the course of treatment.