Clinicians’ beliefs and awareness of substance abuse treatments in research- and nonresearch-affiliated programs.

Clinicians’ beliefs and awareness of treatment techniques may influence what innovations are perceived as needed and adoption of them. Clinicians at research-affiliated programs, however, may differ from clinicians at programs without research affiliation. The researchers surveyed 162 clinicians at 15 substance abuse treatment programs (five research-affiliated programs and ten matched nonresearch-affiliated programs) on addiction treatment belief items and awareness of the National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network treatment innovations currently being tested. The research-affiliated clinicians had a higher percentage of clinicians with advanced degrees. In bivariate analyses, three differences in beliefs and four differences in awareness by research affiliation were found. Most of these differences disappeared during multivariate analyses.

The results suggest that beliefs and awareness toward addiction treatment of research-affiliated clinicians, when controlling for demographic and professional characteristics, may be similar to those of other clinicians. The awareness of innovative treatments for both the CTN and non-CTN clinicians was high, suggesting the CTN selected treatments for evaluation that most clinicians had either heard of or were similar to another known treatment. This similarity should help in wider dissemination for those innovations found acceptable to clinicians at research-affiliated programs.