Negative and positive alcohol expectancies as predictors of abstinence after discharge from a residential treatment program: a one-month and three-month follow-up study in men.

Prediction of Treatment Outcome in a Clinical Sample of Problem Drinkers

“…However, in a previous study based on the self-reports of 125 alcoholism treatment clients, readiness to change predicted abstinence at 12-month follow-up [6]. In another study using the Readiness to Change Questionnaire (RCQ [23]) and the Negative Alcohol Expectancy Questionnaire (NAEQ [24]) to assess client motivation, both readiness to change and alcohol expectancies were related to treatment outcome [25]. However, the results of this study should be interpreted with caution for two reasons.…”

Using the Drinking Expectancy Questionnaire (revised scoring method) in clinical practice

“…High levels of global positive expectancies and negative alcohol expectancy endorsement are predictive of treatment completion (Young & Oei, 1996) and of relapse following alcohol treatment (Jones & McMahon, 1994) (Young & Oei, 1996). However, it is unclear whether alcohol expectancy endorsement at discharge from treatment can also be used as an indicator of longer term drinking outcomes.…”

Alcohol and Drug Expectancies as Anticipated Changes in Affect: Negative Reinforcement Is Not Sedation

“…In the factor-analytic method, the initial focus was on positive expectancies (Brown, Goldman, Inn, and Anderson, 1980), while it was later recognized that negative expectancies have additional predictive power (e.g., Fromme, Stroot, and Kaplan, 1993;Jones and McMahon, 1994;Leigh and Stacy, 1993). Within the category of positive expectancies, positive and negative reinforcement expectancies have been distinguished, especially in research on the "conceptually similar" (D&G, p. 4) construct motives for drinking (Cooper, 1994;Cooper et al, 1995).…”

“…However, there is also evidence that once drinking becomes problematic, negative expectancies (of the effects of continued alcohol abuse) become important and predict successful treatment outcome McMahon, 1994, 1996), probably because negative expectancies fuel motivation to change behavior (Jones and McMahon, 1998). Note that the two types of expectancies are not theoretically equivalent: the scales that assess both positive and negative expectancies consist of expected punishment items (e.g., feel stupid, feel bad after drinking alcohol), while the scale of Jones and McMahon (1994) also contains negative expectancies of the response-cost type (if I continue drinking like this, I might lose my job/wife, etc. ; see Note 2).…”