Abstract
Acute treatment aftercare in the form of sober living environments—i.e., recovery houses—provide an inexpensive and effective medium-term treatment alternative for many with substance use disorders. Limited evidence suggests that house-situated social relationships and associated social support are critical determinants of how successful these residential experiences are for their members, but little is known about the mechanisms underlying these relationships. This study explored the feasibility of using dynamic social network modeling to understand house-situated longitudinal associations among individual Alcoholics Anonymous related recovery behaviors, length of residence, dyadic interpersonal trust, and dyadic confidant relationship formation processes. Trust and confidant relationships were measured 3 months apart in U.S. urban-area recovery houses, all of which were part of a network of substance use recovery homes. A stochastic actor-based model was successfully estimated from this data set. Results suggest that confidant relationships are predicted by trust, while trust is affected by recovery behaviors and length of residence. Conceptualizing recovery houses as a set of independent, evolving social networks that can be modeled jointly appears to be a promising direction for research.
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Notes
Outdegree captures the probability of ego adding one more tie given how many he/she has already, and it is usually negative for friendships, meaning that new friendships become less likely the more ego has. According to exchange theory (e.g. Blau 1964), reciprocity is predicted in non-hierarchical relationships like close friendships, which we assumed characterized confidant and trust relationships. Transitivity, meanwhile, often serves as a stand-in for either physical or social proximity effects, which affect the opportunity to form ties with others. Recovery houses probably provide very similar physical interaction opportunities for all possible dyads, but social proximity may nevertheless be affected by residents’ preferences for similar recovery-related or leisure activities, similar schedules (e.g. “night owls” vs. early risers), and so on.
Also ego, alter, and similarity effects of 12-step activities and time in residence were examined as potential predictors of both trust and confidant ties. An ego effect captures the effect of an individual characteristic X on the number of ties ego tries to create; for example, newer residents may initially attempt to form more ties than longer-time residents. An alter effect is the reverse: it captures the effect of and alter being chosen, depending on X. Similarity, as the name suggests, indicates whether the choosing individual is more likely to direct a relationship to another if he or she is more similar on X, whereas “higher X” captures tendencies to select alters for whom ego has a higher value on X.
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Acknowledgments
The first author appreciates the financial support from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA Grant Numbers AA12218 and AA16973), the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA Grant Numbers DA13231 and DA19935), and the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities (Grant MD002748). Dr. Light was supported by Grant Number HD052887 from the National Institute for Child Health and Development. The authors appreciate the help of Rory Murray.
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Jason, L.A., Light, J.M., Stevens, E.B. et al. Dynamic Social Networks in Recovery Homes. Am J Community Psychol 53, 324–334 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-013-9610-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-013-9610-6