PAC 499 Module 6 Analysis and Findings Example

Someone Like Me Called: Findings From a Peer Welcome Call Pilot in Outpatient Addiction Treatment

Student Name

Psychology and Addiction Studies Program, Aspen University

PAC 499: Senior Capstone

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Someone Like Me Called: Findings From a Peer Welcome Call Pilot in Outpatient Addiction Treatment

Jordan's pilot at Bluegrass Recovery Services, the Lexington outpatient program imagined for this course, ran from August through October. During those three months, peer recovery specialists phoned each newly admitted client on the day after intake, following a written guide. This section reports the findings for each research question and then interprets them. As throughout the capstone, the people, program and numbers are teaching inventions, and the research is real.

RQ1: Thirty-Day Retention

As planned, a client counted as retained at thirty days if they kept any scheduled appointment from the twenty-fifth through the thirty-fifth day after intake. During the pilot, 46 of 71 clients were retained, or 65 percent, compared with 77 of 148, or 52 percent, of clients admitted from January through June.

On the run chart, all three pilot months sat above the baseline median of fifty-two percent and rose each month. Neither pattern meets the rules set out in the previous report: three points fall short of the six needed for a shift and the five needed for a trend. The rise is consistent with an effect of the call but does not demonstrate one.

Reached and Unreached Clients

Of the 71 pilot clients, 60 were reached by phone. Among them, 41 were retained, or 68 percent. Among the 11 not reached, 5 were retained, or 45 percent, close to the baseline. This difference must be read with caution. Clients who answer calls may already be more engaged, more stable or easier to contact for other reasons, so the gap may reflect who answers the phone rather than what the call did. The comparison is reported because it is consistent with the main result, not because it isolates the call's effect.

RQ2: How Clients Experienced the Call

Jordan interviewed eight clients, six who had been reached and two who had not, and coded the transcripts following Braun and Clarke (2006), refining the codebook from the previous report into themes, reviewing each against the full data set and naming it. Three themes described how reached clients experienced the call.

The first, "someone like me," was the strongest. Five of six reached clients said the call mattered because it came from a person in recovery. One said, "She'd been where I was, so I didn't feel judged." Another said, "Counselors are nice, but she knew what the second day feels like."

The second theme was help with the first visit. Clients described practical questions the call resolved, such as where to park, which group to attend and whether they could bring a child. One said, "I didn't know which door, and I wasn't going to ask."

The third theme was feeling expected. Clients described the call as a sign that the program had noticed them. One said, "It felt like they actually noticed I came in." Several tied this to returning: "If someone's waiting for you, it's harder to just not show."

A negative theme also appeared. Two reached clients said the call felt scripted. One said, "It was nice, but it sounded like a list." Both had been called in August, before peers became more comfortable with the guide. The two clients who had not been reached said they did not answer numbers they did not recognize; one did not recall being told to expect the call.

RQ3: What Helped and Hindered the Peers

Interviews with the three peers produced two themes. The first was time. Peers fit calls between groups and other duties, and calls slipped on busy days; they said a fixed calling hour helped. The second was the unanswered call. Before the intake card was introduced, peers found repeated unanswered calls discouraging. After it, they said clients often answered by name. Peers also said that sharing a little of their own story felt natural once they stopped following the guide word for word, which may explain why the scripted theme appeared only in August.

Interpreting the Findings

Simpson (2004) proposed a model of treatment process in which early engagement, shown by attendance and involvement, builds the therapeutic relationship and leads to retention, which in turn leads to better outcomes after treatment. The model treats the first weeks as the point at which programs can most influence whether clients stay. The pilot's findings fit this account. The call was designed to strengthen engagement in the first days, and clients described it as the beginning of a relationship with the program, through a peer they saw as like themselves.

The findings also fit Brorson et al. (2013), whose review found a weak therapeutic alliance among the few consistent predictors of dropout. Clients' accounts of feeling expected and understood describe a connection beginning before the second visit. And they extend Eddie et al. (2019), whose review found peer support associated with engagement and retention but noted that few studies described what peers actually did. The pilot adds a precisely described, brief peer contact with retention results and clients' own accounts of why it mattered.

What the Findings Do Not Show

The findings do not show that the call caused retention to rise. Without random assignment, the change could reflect other factors, such as the new intake card itself, seasonal differences or staff changes. The pilot was short, the numbers small and the interviews limited to clients who agreed. Results from one program may not hold elsewhere. What the findings do show is that the call could be delivered reliably, that reach improved after a simple change and that retention moved in the direction predicted.

Conclusion

Thirty-day retention rose from 52 percent at baseline to 65 percent during the pilot, with each month higher than the last, though three months fall short of a signal on the run chart. Clients described the call as coming from someone like them, as practical help with the first visit and as a sign they were expected; some found early calls scripted. Peers struggled with time and unanswered calls and found the intake card helpful. Read against Simpson's model and the reviewed literature, the findings support further testing of the call.

References

Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77-101. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa

Brorson, H. H., Ajo Arnevik, E., Rand-Hendriksen, K., & Duckert, F. (2013). Drop-out from addiction treatment: A systematic review of risk factors. Clinical Psychology Review, 33(8), 1010-1024. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2013.07.007

Eddie, D., Hoffman, L., Vilsaint, C., Abry, A., Bergman, B., Hoeppner, B., Weinstein, C., & Kelly, J. F. (2019). Lived experience in new models of care for substance use disorder: A systematic review of peer recovery support services and recovery coaching. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, Article 1052. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01052

Simpson, D. D. (2004). A conceptual framework for drug treatment process and outcomes. Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 27(2), 99-121. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsat.2004.06.001