NewsMax.com Wires
LONDON -- Lawyers for Britney Spears won a British court injunction Thursday designed to prevent publication of stories about her recent stay in rehab. The injunction bars unidentified "person or persons ... who has/have been leaking information about Ms. Spears' time in a rehabilitation clinic from further disclosures invading her privacy," said Schillings, the 25-year-old pop star's London law firm.
The injunction was issued at the High Court by Judge Charles Gray.
Spears left Promises Malibu Alcohol and Drug Rehab Treatment Facility in California "after successfully completing their program," her manager, Larry Rudolph, said this week. He asked that Spears' privacy be respected.
She entered the facility Feb. 22 after a bout of bizarre behavior that included shaving her head, getting tiny lips tattooed on her wrist and beating a car with an umbrella.
Schillings said Spears planned to ask the court to force media outlets that had printed stories about her time in rehab to reveal their sources so that the source of the leak could be identified "and action can be taken against him/her."
Spears' activities have been fodder for weekly magazines and entertainment Web sites since she filed for divorce from aspiring rapper Kevin Federline in November, citing irreconcilable differences
She hasn't disclosed why she sought treatment at Promises, which offers detox, counseling and 12-step programs. A 30-day stay at the Mediterranean-style villa in the Santa Monica Mountains costs $48,000.
© 2007 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Hasselhoff to attend alcohol rehab
Source : Onlypunjab.com Team
Former Baywatch star David Hasselhoff has been ordered to attend an alcohol treatment programme in the US after pleading no contest to drink driving.
Hasselhoff was arrested by police in Los Angeles in June, and charged with driving under the influence.
The 52-year-old did not attend the court hearing and his lawyer entered the plea on his behalf reports BBC online.
The judge also ordered Hasselhoff to perform 200 hours of community service and gave him three years probation.
The actor must also pay a fine of £212 and will have his driving licence revoked for 90 days.
Hasselhoff has previously spoken about his battle with alcohol and entered the famous Betty Ford clinic in California in 2002, saying he had "hit rock bottom".
The actor is best known for his roles in Knight Rider and Baywatch, on which he was an executive producer.
He has recently completed a run in the West End production of the musical Chicago in London.
Former Baywatch star David Hasselhoff has been ordered to attend an alcohol treatment programme in the US after pleading no contest to drink driving.
Hasselhoff was arrested by police in Los Angeles in June, and charged with driving under the influence.
The 52-year-old did not attend the court hearing and his lawyer entered the plea on his behalf reports BBC online.
The judge also ordered Hasselhoff to perform 200 hours of community service and gave him three years probation.
The actor must also pay a fine of £212 and will have his driving licence revoked for 90 days.
Hasselhoff has previously spoken about his battle with alcohol and entered the famous Betty Ford clinic in California in 2002, saying he had "hit rock bottom".
The actor is best known for his roles in Knight Rider and Baywatch, on which he was an executive producer.
He has recently completed a run in the West End production of the musical Chicago in London.
Drug Addiction - Kicking The Habit And Live Life Again
By Moses Wright
With soft drugs becoming popular among the young, many are easily tempted and turn to hard drugs as they progress. Often, many get addicted and it is crucial to kick the habit. Drug rehabilitation is gaining acceptance as more people sign up for it.
However, one should know that drug rehabilitation is relatively complicated as it has to deal with the patients’ mental state to some extent and how that mentality affects their behavior and craving for drugs. Some people are chronically addicted to drugs, ad this can have a long lasting effect on their lives, as their brain functions and behavior can be affected.
It is important to help your loved ones regain a level of normalcy without depending on drugs. Drug rehabilitation centers can help them improve their quality of life, thus it is important to choose wisely when deciding on a drug rehabilitation center. Drug rehabilitation centers can have different philosophies and this would affect the methods they adopt to help your loved ones kick the habit. You should choose one that offers an appropriate program to address specific problems you might have.
More than two decades worth of clinical practice and scientific research have shown that different approaches work for different people. Thus, there are also a variety of methods to help people deal with the problem of addiction. Certain approaches in drug rehabilitation may work on one individual, yet make no positive impact whatsoever on another.
When shopping for a drug rehabilitation center, do check out the different types of programs offered as these programs should match to the patient’s condition to obtain the most effective treatment for their needs. There will be a drug rehabilitation program that will suit the character and needs of the individual, as some of these programs can be tailored-fit. These programs are focused and can help to control their condition to enable them to live normal and productive lives.
Despite the severity of the drug addiction, there is still hope in treating and helping the addicts. While some centers offer medication to suppress craving for the drugs, there are other rehabilitation centers that focus more on therapy. Drug rehabilitation focuses on behavioral therapy. This includes psychiatric counseling and psychotherapy as well as basic counseling. In addition, there are support groups formed within drug rehabilitation centers. Frequently, these support groups also consist of other patients with the same drug addiction. These support groups would also include family members of the patient, as this would increase the support level and help family members understand the obstacles the patient might be facing.
Duration of programs can differ. Short-term treatments are available, and they include medication therapy, drug-free outpatient therapy as well as residential therapy in which patients can check into the centers for care, which can last from six days to less than six months.
However, long term treatments include both residential and outpatient therapies last over six months long. The duration for which a patient needs treatment depends on the individual. Each individual is different and the response to treatment and the success rate would thus be different. However, it has been noted that with increased exposure to treatments, the patient gains a higher chance of full recovery. Patients whose treatment periods last beyond three months tend to have better physical and emotional results.
In conclusion, the main goal is to allow the patients to lead a normal life without dependency on drugs. However, the initial treatment might be harsh, as the drug addiction has to be treated immediately by restricting the use of drugs before other methods can be utilized.
Moses Wright is the founder of Rehabilitation Program. He provides more useful information on Drug Addiction Rehabilitation and Physical Rehabilitation Therapy on his website. Webmasters are welcome to reprint this article if you keep the content and live link intact.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Moses_Wright
With soft drugs becoming popular among the young, many are easily tempted and turn to hard drugs as they progress. Often, many get addicted and it is crucial to kick the habit. Drug rehabilitation is gaining acceptance as more people sign up for it.
However, one should know that drug rehabilitation is relatively complicated as it has to deal with the patients’ mental state to some extent and how that mentality affects their behavior and craving for drugs. Some people are chronically addicted to drugs, ad this can have a long lasting effect on their lives, as their brain functions and behavior can be affected.
It is important to help your loved ones regain a level of normalcy without depending on drugs. Drug rehabilitation centers can help them improve their quality of life, thus it is important to choose wisely when deciding on a drug rehabilitation center. Drug rehabilitation centers can have different philosophies and this would affect the methods they adopt to help your loved ones kick the habit. You should choose one that offers an appropriate program to address specific problems you might have.
More than two decades worth of clinical practice and scientific research have shown that different approaches work for different people. Thus, there are also a variety of methods to help people deal with the problem of addiction. Certain approaches in drug rehabilitation may work on one individual, yet make no positive impact whatsoever on another.
When shopping for a drug rehabilitation center, do check out the different types of programs offered as these programs should match to the patient’s condition to obtain the most effective treatment for their needs. There will be a drug rehabilitation program that will suit the character and needs of the individual, as some of these programs can be tailored-fit. These programs are focused and can help to control their condition to enable them to live normal and productive lives.
Despite the severity of the drug addiction, there is still hope in treating and helping the addicts. While some centers offer medication to suppress craving for the drugs, there are other rehabilitation centers that focus more on therapy. Drug rehabilitation focuses on behavioral therapy. This includes psychiatric counseling and psychotherapy as well as basic counseling. In addition, there are support groups formed within drug rehabilitation centers. Frequently, these support groups also consist of other patients with the same drug addiction. These support groups would also include family members of the patient, as this would increase the support level and help family members understand the obstacles the patient might be facing.
Duration of programs can differ. Short-term treatments are available, and they include medication therapy, drug-free outpatient therapy as well as residential therapy in which patients can check into the centers for care, which can last from six days to less than six months.
However, long term treatments include both residential and outpatient therapies last over six months long. The duration for which a patient needs treatment depends on the individual. Each individual is different and the response to treatment and the success rate would thus be different. However, it has been noted that with increased exposure to treatments, the patient gains a higher chance of full recovery. Patients whose treatment periods last beyond three months tend to have better physical and emotional results.
In conclusion, the main goal is to allow the patients to lead a normal life without dependency on drugs. However, the initial treatment might be harsh, as the drug addiction has to be treated immediately by restricting the use of drugs before other methods can be utilized.
Moses Wright is the founder of Rehabilitation Program. He provides more useful information on Drug Addiction Rehabilitation and Physical Rehabilitation Therapy on his website. Webmasters are welcome to reprint this article if you keep the content and live link intact.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Moses_Wright
TIP/TAP Series: The NIMBY Syndrome
As the TIP/TAP columns of the past several issues have explained, these manuals are put together and distributed by the Department of Health & Human Services, Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT) as recommended guidelines and protocols for all U.S. substance abuse treatment programs.
"All neighborhoods in the United States today have witnessed or suffered the tragic effects of alcohol and other drug abuse" begins page 1 of TAP 14, Siting Drug and Alcohol Treatment Programs--Legal Challenges to the NIMBY Syndrome. While many Americans understand and worry about the extent of the growing drug problem, there is still plenty of "community opposition--commonly known as the NIMBY (not in my backyard) syndrome--" when it comes to opening a treatment center in their own neighborhood.
"The NIMBY syndrome is not new...," and along with substance abuse treatment centers, NIMBY has delayed or stopped the openings of many "health and social service facilities, including homeless shelters, group homes for the mentally ill, halfway houses for ex-offenders..." and health facilities for patients with AIDS.
TAP 14 explains that while some localities try to use zoning ordinances to stop a clinic from opening, this is discriminatory and may be unlawful. "Federal disability-based antidiscrimination laws (including the Fair Housing Act, the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans With Disabilities Act), the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment..., and many individual State laws have been used successfully to overturn the actions of local governments" that attempt to stop the opening of drug abuse programs. The entire TAP 14 manual concerns zoning requirements, legal challenges, review of case laws, and gives suggestions, examples, and case studies.
Community opposition to methadone treatment clinics seems to be based on the fear that clinics will draw drug pushers, thieves, and other criminals, and property values will decline. "In reality, treatment programs pose no legitimate danger to the health or welfare of residents. . .nor do they draw pushers to the area. In fact, (clinics) improve neighborhoods by helping people get well" (TAP 14, p. 1). TIP 1, State Methadone Treatment Guidelines, says "Despite more than 25 years of research and practical experience in methadone maintenance treatment of opiate addicts, the public lacks knowledge of the scientific efficacy of methadone maintenance treatment" (p. 125).
This is where community education comes in. It is important that "local decision makers and residents understand that treatment programs help communities by reducing many of the costly problems associated with active alcohol and other drug abuse and that treatment enables former users to return to productive lives" (TAP 14, p. 45). People need to learn about and understand methadone maintenance treatment (MMT): that MMT "encourages abstinence and prevents (patients) from relapsing"; that patients on MMT do not get high from their daily dose of medication, but rather are able to function normally and return to jobs; that clinics monitor "(patient) drug use through urinalysis..."; and discourage any loitering outside of the clinic by patients (TAP 14, p. 45). Additionally, MMT is "associated with substantial improvements in public health and employment and a reduction in HIV risk and criminal behavior" (TIP 1, pg. 125).
In TIP 20, Matching Treatment to Patient Needs in Opioid Substitution Therapy, there is an entire chapter on cost effectiveness of methadone treatment. It lists numerous studies that show the benefit and savings to communities of methadone maintenance treatment when compared to costs such as imprisoning drug users, hospitalizing addicts for health problems resulting from illicit drug use (like HIV/AIDS, HCV, TB, etc.), and costs due to lost productivity and illness, including paying for illicit-drug-using addicts on welfare, Medicaid, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, and for foster care of children of mothers/fathers in prison. When you add in the costs of crime resulting from illicit drug use, the cost of treatment sounds better and smarter all the time!
"Substance abuse treatment can greatly reduce health care costs. . . . For every dollar spent on treatment, more than $7 in future costs were saved." With treatment, ". . .criminal activity declined by two-thirds and hospitalizations by one-third," and use of alcohol and other drugs declined "two-fifths." Also, after treatment began, "States averaged an increase of more than 70% in the number of (patients) employed." Arrests of patients dropped dramatically, decreases ranging from "50% to 90%" in various states (pp. 97-98). Again, the TIP/TAP books cite numerous studies to back up these amazing figures. The public just needs to hear about them.
Costs of different kinds of treatment are compared too, showing that methadone maintenance treatment is the most cost effective of all of them. For example, "the treatment costs per day were residential $61.47; social model $34.41; outpatient drug free $7.87; methadone (maintenance) $6.37; and methadone (detox) $6.79." It also points out that because of the "high recidivism or relapse rates" with the chronic disease of addiction, the best cost benefits come with long-term treatment. "When patients dropped out of treatment, most relapsed to drug abuse within one year, often returning to previous criminal patterns to support the addiction. Therefore, patients should be encouraged to remain in treatment" (p. 99).
"All neighborhoods in the United States today have witnessed or suffered the tragic effects of alcohol and other drug abuse" begins page 1 of TAP 14, Siting Drug and Alcohol Treatment Programs--Legal Challenges to the NIMBY Syndrome. While many Americans understand and worry about the extent of the growing drug problem, there is still plenty of "community opposition--commonly known as the NIMBY (not in my backyard) syndrome--" when it comes to opening a treatment center in their own neighborhood.
"The NIMBY syndrome is not new...," and along with substance abuse treatment centers, NIMBY has delayed or stopped the openings of many "health and social service facilities, including homeless shelters, group homes for the mentally ill, halfway houses for ex-offenders..." and health facilities for patients with AIDS.
TAP 14 explains that while some localities try to use zoning ordinances to stop a clinic from opening, this is discriminatory and may be unlawful. "Federal disability-based antidiscrimination laws (including the Fair Housing Act, the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans With Disabilities Act), the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment..., and many individual State laws have been used successfully to overturn the actions of local governments" that attempt to stop the opening of drug abuse programs. The entire TAP 14 manual concerns zoning requirements, legal challenges, review of case laws, and gives suggestions, examples, and case studies.
Community opposition to methadone treatment clinics seems to be based on the fear that clinics will draw drug pushers, thieves, and other criminals, and property values will decline. "In reality, treatment programs pose no legitimate danger to the health or welfare of residents. . .nor do they draw pushers to the area. In fact, (clinics) improve neighborhoods by helping people get well" (TAP 14, p. 1). TIP 1, State Methadone Treatment Guidelines, says "Despite more than 25 years of research and practical experience in methadone maintenance treatment of opiate addicts, the public lacks knowledge of the scientific efficacy of methadone maintenance treatment" (p. 125).
This is where community education comes in. It is important that "local decision makers and residents understand that treatment programs help communities by reducing many of the costly problems associated with active alcohol and other drug abuse and that treatment enables former users to return to productive lives" (TAP 14, p. 45). People need to learn about and understand methadone maintenance treatment (MMT): that MMT "encourages abstinence and prevents (patients) from relapsing"; that patients on MMT do not get high from their daily dose of medication, but rather are able to function normally and return to jobs; that clinics monitor "(patient) drug use through urinalysis..."; and discourage any loitering outside of the clinic by patients (TAP 14, p. 45). Additionally, MMT is "associated with substantial improvements in public health and employment and a reduction in HIV risk and criminal behavior" (TIP 1, pg. 125).
In TIP 20, Matching Treatment to Patient Needs in Opioid Substitution Therapy, there is an entire chapter on cost effectiveness of methadone treatment. It lists numerous studies that show the benefit and savings to communities of methadone maintenance treatment when compared to costs such as imprisoning drug users, hospitalizing addicts for health problems resulting from illicit drug use (like HIV/AIDS, HCV, TB, etc.), and costs due to lost productivity and illness, including paying for illicit-drug-using addicts on welfare, Medicaid, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, and for foster care of children of mothers/fathers in prison. When you add in the costs of crime resulting from illicit drug use, the cost of treatment sounds better and smarter all the time!
"Substance abuse treatment can greatly reduce health care costs. . . . For every dollar spent on treatment, more than $7 in future costs were saved." With treatment, ". . .criminal activity declined by two-thirds and hospitalizations by one-third," and use of alcohol and other drugs declined "two-fifths." Also, after treatment began, "States averaged an increase of more than 70% in the number of (patients) employed." Arrests of patients dropped dramatically, decreases ranging from "50% to 90%" in various states (pp. 97-98). Again, the TIP/TAP books cite numerous studies to back up these amazing figures. The public just needs to hear about them.
Costs of different kinds of treatment are compared too, showing that methadone maintenance treatment is the most cost effective of all of them. For example, "the treatment costs per day were residential $61.47; social model $34.41; outpatient drug free $7.87; methadone (maintenance) $6.37; and methadone (detox) $6.79." It also points out that because of the "high recidivism or relapse rates" with the chronic disease of addiction, the best cost benefits come with long-term treatment. "When patients dropped out of treatment, most relapsed to drug abuse within one year, often returning to previous criminal patterns to support the addiction. Therefore, patients should be encouraged to remain in treatment" (p. 99).
Objective Of Alcohol Rehabilitation Program- Paul Johnson The main objective of alcohol
Objective Of Alcohol Rehabilitation Program
- Paul Johnson
The main objective of alcohol rehabilitation programs is to
free you from the bondage of alcoholism. These programs
help you to discover newer ways to live without alcohol.
Different alcohol rehabilitation centers are offering
various types of alcohol rehabilitation programs to treat
alcoholism. Here is some information that may help you for
selecting the right alcohol rehabilitation program.
Consult a good alcohol rehabilitation center for finding a
suitable alcohol rehabilitation program. Doctors and
alcohol rehabilitation specialists will study your case and
conduct certain tests on you to find out a suitable program
for you.
Every individual has a unique history to alcoholism. Hence,
the rehabilitation program must be tailor-made to suit your
case.
Generally, the alcohol rehabilitation programs include
services such as hospitalization, medication, diet,
exercise, counseling, sauna, spiritual therapy, hypnosis,
amino acids and community activity.
Depending upon your case, doctors will recommend the
services that need to be included in the rehabilitation
programs designed for you.
The doctors would advice you to join either the “outpatient
treatment program” or the “residential inpatient treatment
program” depending on your intensity of alcohol dependency.
Here are some details about both the options.
Outpatient Alcohol Rehabilitation Program
If you do not have a long history of alcoholism, an
outpatient rehabilitation/ treatment program might be the
correct option. You might need counseling and guidance as a
part of your treatment.
Outpatient alcohol rehab program is a suitable option
treatment of alcoholism at its early stage. This program is
recommended for those individuals, whose occupational and
family environments are intact and for those who
demonstrate a high degree of commitment to quit alcohol.
This program provides adequate support service for your
day-to-day life.
Residential/ Inpatient Alcohol Rehabilitation Program
If you have experienced a long period of alcoholism,
doctors might recommend you for a residential or inpatient
alcohol rehabilitation program. The inpatient treatment
program provides 24-hour support and it is highly
effective.
This treatment is not just confined to amelioration of
symptoms. Rather this variant of alcohol rehab focuses on
addressing and resolving the factors that contribute to
alcoholism. Under the inpatient alcohol rehabilitation
program besides medication, you will participate in
educational lectures.
Counseling based treatment will be given to you on personal
basis as well as in small group settings. Some of the
inpatient alcohol rehabilitation programs also include
additional activities such as yoga and spiritual methods of
recovery.
The alcohol rehabilitation program also includes several
support services even after abstinence is achieved. This
ensures a perfect recovery and prevents a possible relapse.
This includes promoting religious involvement, imbibing
good health practices, proper diet, exercise, sleep
therapy, and self-enhancement projects.
===========================================================
Discover valuable advice and information about alcohol
rehab - its effectiveness, and where to get treatment
Website contains valuable articles and information about
the widespread alcohol addiction problem. Click ==>
http://www.alcohol-rehab-success.com/alcohol-rehab-program.html
** Attn Ezine editors / Site Owners ** Feel free to reprint
this article in its entirety in your ezine or on your site
so long as you leave all links in place, do not modify the
content and include my resource box as listed above.
About the Author
Paul Johnson works as a software developer, often working
long hours under great stress. A few years ago he realized
alcohol was becoming a problem. He researched and
personally experienced the issues involved in alcohol
rehab. Now he’s written a series of useful articles on
alcohol rehabilitation.
- Paul Johnson
The main objective of alcohol rehabilitation programs is to
free you from the bondage of alcoholism. These programs
help you to discover newer ways to live without alcohol.
Different alcohol rehabilitation centers are offering
various types of alcohol rehabilitation programs to treat
alcoholism. Here is some information that may help you for
selecting the right alcohol rehabilitation program.
Consult a good alcohol rehabilitation center for finding a
suitable alcohol rehabilitation program. Doctors and
alcohol rehabilitation specialists will study your case and
conduct certain tests on you to find out a suitable program
for you.
Every individual has a unique history to alcoholism. Hence,
the rehabilitation program must be tailor-made to suit your
case.
Generally, the alcohol rehabilitation programs include
services such as hospitalization, medication, diet,
exercise, counseling, sauna, spiritual therapy, hypnosis,
amino acids and community activity.
Depending upon your case, doctors will recommend the
services that need to be included in the rehabilitation
programs designed for you.
The doctors would advice you to join either the “outpatient
treatment program” or the “residential inpatient treatment
program” depending on your intensity of alcohol dependency.
Here are some details about both the options.
Outpatient Alcohol Rehabilitation Program
If you do not have a long history of alcoholism, an
outpatient rehabilitation/ treatment program might be the
correct option. You might need counseling and guidance as a
part of your treatment.
Outpatient alcohol rehab program is a suitable option
treatment of alcoholism at its early stage. This program is
recommended for those individuals, whose occupational and
family environments are intact and for those who
demonstrate a high degree of commitment to quit alcohol.
This program provides adequate support service for your
day-to-day life.
Residential/ Inpatient Alcohol Rehabilitation Program
If you have experienced a long period of alcoholism,
doctors might recommend you for a residential or inpatient
alcohol rehabilitation program. The inpatient treatment
program provides 24-hour support and it is highly
effective.
This treatment is not just confined to amelioration of
symptoms. Rather this variant of alcohol rehab focuses on
addressing and resolving the factors that contribute to
alcoholism. Under the inpatient alcohol rehabilitation
program besides medication, you will participate in
educational lectures.
Counseling based treatment will be given to you on personal
basis as well as in small group settings. Some of the
inpatient alcohol rehabilitation programs also include
additional activities such as yoga and spiritual methods of
recovery.
The alcohol rehabilitation program also includes several
support services even after abstinence is achieved. This
ensures a perfect recovery and prevents a possible relapse.
This includes promoting religious involvement, imbibing
good health practices, proper diet, exercise, sleep
therapy, and self-enhancement projects.
===========================================================
Discover valuable advice and information about alcohol
rehab - its effectiveness, and where to get treatment
Website contains valuable articles and information about
the widespread alcohol addiction problem. Click ==>
http://www.alcohol-rehab-success.com/alcohol-rehab-program.html
** Attn Ezine editors / Site Owners ** Feel free to reprint
this article in its entirety in your ezine or on your site
so long as you leave all links in place, do not modify the
content and include my resource box as listed above.
About the Author
Paul Johnson works as a software developer, often working
long hours under great stress. A few years ago he realized
alcohol was becoming a problem. He researched and
personally experienced the issues involved in alcohol
rehab. Now he’s written a series of useful articles on
alcohol rehabilitation.
The Acne Removal Discovery That Really Works
By: Adam Frazier II
What should I do about my acne skin care? Some products may be good for you and others not so good. There are products with alcohol or abrasive components that can cause potential scaring. Research will help you find the best product for your acne skin care.
Some people simply have oily skin and their glands work continually to provide fuel for bacteria to multiply. The best skin care products will work on both aspects, to turn of the oil and also get rid of the acne.
If you want a intelligent freshness to your skin, then your skin care sub-program can assist. With a benevolent posture and discipline you might be able to stall the action of ageing for at the least a couple of years. With the correct anti aging skincare wareses you'll look more vernal than ever.
Ascertain what turns out most beneficial for your skin. You may inquire , what is the most decent acne skin care? With all the products in the marketplace, on that point are some that might do additional hurt than beneficial results.
Be wise and consult with your dermatologist before you use a skin care product, you could end up doing harm to your skin. When it comes to your skin, always remember to treat with care.
You eyes, skin, and complexion have very much to tell about your overall wellness. Beautiful skin is the first thing that is noticed when people meet you. And imputable for several grounds, skincare beauty resources constitute a substantial industry.
Always maintain a healthy attitude towards your skin. Skin care is one of the most important things you can do, as well as take care of the rest of your body. There are many anti-aging products that work, but your attitude determines your altitude.
Fit skin is authentically among the most substantial ingredients for beauty-enhancement and care. This article on skin care tips is an campaign to establish the 10 most efficacious skin care points to you. The amount of skin care points gives but 10 since anything additional than that wouldn't only be hard to recollect, but also dwarf the more crucial skin care tips. Therefore let's see what these greatest ten skin care tips are:
Not every skin care product influences every kind of skin. It all hinges upon the type of skin the user has. If you first recognize your skin characteristics, that's among the most authoritative skin care elements to learn.
You may desire to pop and crush whiteheads in enticement that this will eliminate them. This won't work and will in force make affairs very much gloomier. Your skin could then bear the trama of pitting and scaring.
Article Source: http://www.victortunggal.com
Get Extensive Health And Natural Skin Care Information, And The Best Personal Skin Care Products With The Most Complete Acne Treatment Tips At www.advancesinhealth.com
What should I do about my acne skin care? Some products may be good for you and others not so good. There are products with alcohol or abrasive components that can cause potential scaring. Research will help you find the best product for your acne skin care.
Some people simply have oily skin and their glands work continually to provide fuel for bacteria to multiply. The best skin care products will work on both aspects, to turn of the oil and also get rid of the acne.
If you want a intelligent freshness to your skin, then your skin care sub-program can assist. With a benevolent posture and discipline you might be able to stall the action of ageing for at the least a couple of years. With the correct anti aging skincare wareses you'll look more vernal than ever.
Ascertain what turns out most beneficial for your skin. You may inquire , what is the most decent acne skin care? With all the products in the marketplace, on that point are some that might do additional hurt than beneficial results.
Be wise and consult with your dermatologist before you use a skin care product, you could end up doing harm to your skin. When it comes to your skin, always remember to treat with care.
You eyes, skin, and complexion have very much to tell about your overall wellness. Beautiful skin is the first thing that is noticed when people meet you. And imputable for several grounds, skincare beauty resources constitute a substantial industry.
Always maintain a healthy attitude towards your skin. Skin care is one of the most important things you can do, as well as take care of the rest of your body. There are many anti-aging products that work, but your attitude determines your altitude.
Fit skin is authentically among the most substantial ingredients for beauty-enhancement and care. This article on skin care tips is an campaign to establish the 10 most efficacious skin care points to you. The amount of skin care points gives but 10 since anything additional than that wouldn't only be hard to recollect, but also dwarf the more crucial skin care tips. Therefore let's see what these greatest ten skin care tips are:
Not every skin care product influences every kind of skin. It all hinges upon the type of skin the user has. If you first recognize your skin characteristics, that's among the most authoritative skin care elements to learn.
You may desire to pop and crush whiteheads in enticement that this will eliminate them. This won't work and will in force make affairs very much gloomier. Your skin could then bear the trama of pitting and scaring.
Article Source: http://www.victortunggal.com
Get Extensive Health And Natural Skin Care Information, And The Best Personal Skin Care Products With The Most Complete Acne Treatment Tips At www.advancesinhealth.com
Predictors of adolescent A.A. affiliation. (Alcoholics Anonymous)
From: Adolescence
Alcoholics who receive treatment in in-patient settings are routinely referred to Alcoholics Anonymous upon discharge, yet not all affiliate with A.A. The characteristics of A.A. affiliators have been explored in the past to further improve discharge planning, but to date no studies have described the characteristics of adolescents who affiliate with A.A. The sample used in this study was 70 adolescents who had completed in-patient treatment and were contacted as part of a follow-up survey. Half of the group had affiliated with A.A. A discriminant analysis was used to predict affiliation, and the study found that affiliators were more likely to have had prior treatment, had friends who did not use drugs, had less parental involvement while in treatment, and more feelings of hopelessness. Possible explanations for these findings are discussed as well as areas for further research.
Thousands of teenagers are treated each year in in-patient or residential settings for drug and alcohol dependency. The majority of these programs use the traditional treatment model, also known as the Minnesota Model (Littrell, 1991). This model emphasizes addiction as a disease where one achieves recovery through abstinence, and that one must participate in a support group such as Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) in order to maintain this abstinence. Patients attend AA while hospitalized and are encouraged to continue their attendance upon discharge. AA itself has seen a tremendous growth in membership over the last decade. Currently there are over one million members in the United States alone (About AA, 1990) with approximately 3% of its members being under 21 years of age.
While not every adolescent who receives treatment will affiliate with AA, it is important to study the characteristics of those who do. Because referral to AA is a routine discharge plan, it may help mental health practitioners to know which of their clients may be more likely to join this self-help program. This subject is particularly pertinent because it has not been investigated with the adolescent population.
Various studies have researched A.A. affiliation with the goal of describing who joins AA in the hope that treatment providers could utilize "a more informed basis for treatment planning" (O'Leary, Calsyn, Haddock, & Freeman, 1980, p. 137). An outline of these studies can be found in Table 1.
It is virtually impossible to define the population of abstinent alcoholics, both those in AA and those not so affiliated. One of the strictest traditions of AA is that of anonymity of its members. As can be seen, the samples used in most of these studies were mainly hospitalized, adult males. Using currently hospitalized patients may pose problems because of long-term cognitive impairment (Gorski & Miller, 1982) and what Marlatt (1985) refers to as the abstinence violation effect, which is intense shame, guilt, and hopelessness that A.A. members may feel upon relapse and re-entry into treatment. This effect may bias the responses of the recently relapsed patients who are readmitted. Of all these studies, only Hurlburt, Gade and Fuqua (1983) specified race. Four of the studies used AA to recruit participants, leading to a self-selected sample. The study by Alford (1980) was a follow-up that had a somewhat better sample in that all the respondents had received the same intervention.
As a few of the researchers pointed out, it is hard to ascertain whether respondents had the characteristics studied prior to affiliation with AA or if AA caused them to develop. An example of this is Mindlin's (1964) findings of "less socially ill at ease" and "less loneliness."
At least four of the studies (Fontana, Dowds, & Bethel 1976; Greg-son & Taylor, 1977; Reilly & Sugarman, 1967; Trice, 1959) are similar in their finding that attributes could be categorized as external personality characteristics, such as use of more external sources of authority, religiosity, and formalistic thinking.
Many findings among the studies were contradictory; for example, Boscarino (1980) found less alcohol-related problems, while O'Leary et al. (1980) and Vaillant (1983) found more alcohol-related problems. Hurlburt et al. (1983) found that the AA affiliates were "less emotional" and Reilly and Sugarman (1967) found them to be more sensitive and concerned with acceptance. (See Table 1.)
This review of the literature also indicates that the area of AA affiliation has mainly been researched among adult samples. It was found that females, extroverts, and those who have suffered more alcohol-related problems are more likely to affiliate with A.A.
While A.A. affiliation has not been studied with adolescents, treatment outcome studies provide some relevant information. Hoffman [TABULAR DATA FOR TABLE 1 OMITTED] and Kaplan (1991) found in a study of treated alcoholic adolescents that those whose parents had participated in treatment were more likely to participate in a support group, and the less the teens' peers used drugs, the more likely they were to achieve abstinence.
On the basis of the previous research, the following hypothesis was proposed: Adolescent A.A. affiliation may be predicted by gender (female), the number of prior treatment experiences (indicating more alcohol-related problems), parents' involvement in treatment, fewer peers who use drugs/alcohol, and lower levels of hopelessness (depression).
The purpose of this study was to describe characteristics of treated adolescents who affiliate with Alcoholics Anonymous, and of those who choose not to. A discriminant analysis was conducted to determine if the hypothesized set of variables accurately predict AA affiliation.
METHOD
This study was part of a larger outcome study conducted by a telephone interview survey. The telephone interview is an appropriate method for obtaining sensitive information that a respondent might otherwise be reluctant to give face-to-face (Mayer & Greenwood, 1980). It also provided a greater response than would be received in a mailed questionnaire. Numerous attempts were made to locate the respondents in order to decrease self-selection bias. In this study, the interviewers were neutral parties, having no interest in whether the respondent was "successful." Maisto and Connors (1988) highly recommend this approach.
Sample Population and Data Collection
The population for this study consisted of all patients who were admitted to an adolescent residential treatment facility between May, 1989 and November, 1990. All patients in the study were diagnosed as dependent on drugs and/or alcohol by a psychiatrist, according to DSM III-R criteria. They may or may not have had a secondary behavioral health diagnosis which was treated concurrently. The age range is 12 to 21, with an average age of 15.1. Most of the subjects are from families of middle to upper class incomes; the treatment is funded by third-party insurance.
The interviewers were social work graduate students who received brief training on the purpose and method of interviewing the adolescents. The treatment program supplied the investigator with the names and last known phone numbers of the population to be surveyed. Also provided was treatment background data, such as age, length of stay in treatment, drug of choice, and to whom the patient was discharged. The total population was 155; 80 could not be located, five refused to participate in the survey, and 70 agreed to be interviewed. Of the 70 respondents, 60% were female and 39% were male.
The interviewer introduced him or herself, indicating that an outcome study of the treatment program's former patients was being conducted, and that the interviewer was an independent consultant. Respondents were all assured of the confidentiality of their answers. Verbal consent was then solicited. Finally, the interviewer asked the respondent to be as honest as possible since the answers were very important.
The survey itself asked standard questions regarding abstinence, or if relapsed, the drugs or alcohol used. Also included were variables regarding life satisfaction, mood states, social and family support, self-esteem, thoughts regarding drug/alcohol use and addiction, and self-help activities.
Measures
Six variables were included in this study: A.A. affiliation, gender, prior treatment experiences, parents' involvement in treatment, peers' use of drugs or alcohol, and feelings of hopelessness. They were measured as follows:
A.A. affiliation. This was measured in two ways: first as a dichotomous variable, as to whether the respondent was attending AA, and second as a continuous variable, asking how many times a week they attend meetings.
Gender. This was a dichotomous variable asked at the beginning of the survey.
Number of treatment experiences. Prior treatment experiences were solicited, for both chemical dependency and behavioral health treatment. Because the respondent could interpret these questions in many ways (was previous "treatment" school-based, an out-patient group or individual therapy, or in-patient care?), it was left to respondents to decide what they considered "previous treatment." Both questions were then combined to make a continuous variable.
Parents' involvement in treatment. Respondents were asked if the family participated while they were in treatment. Other measures asked if the various components of family treatment were helpful (individual family therapy, group family therapy, and a family workshop). Regardless of how respondents viewed the helpfulness of these components, those who answered other than "didn't participate" or "missing" were considered as having had parental participation. Those who answered "yes" to the participation question and were involved in individual and group family therapy or the family workshop were considered to have parental involvement. This is because not every family was given the opportunity to participate in the workshop and some families do not go to the workshop because it is too far.
Peers' use of drugs/alcohol. Respondents were asked about friends who regularly use drugs or alcohol. Their responses were classified as "none," "only one," or "a few."
Hopelessness. The hopelessness scale used in the study is a measure of depression which manifests as isolation, loneliness, and introversion, the opposite of affiliator behaviors found in Mindlin (1964) and Hurlburt et al. (1983). This was measured by the Hopelessness Scale for Children developed by Kazdin, Rodgers, and Colbus (1986). The scale contains 27 items wherein the respondent indicates "yes" or "no" to each item. A cumulative index is generated varying from 17 to 34, higher scores indicating greater hopelessness.
This scale was originally evaluated on 262 child psychiatric inpatients, ages 6 to 13. The reliability of the scale measured by internal consistency, yielded a coefficient alpha of .97 and a Spearman-Brown split-half reliability of .96. To determine the validity of the scale, its scores were correlated with measures of depression, self-esteem, and social behavior. Resulting correlations indicated significant relations in the predicted direction. Hopelessness was found to be positively correlated with depression (r = .58) and negatively correlated with self-esteem (r = -.61) and social skills (r = -.39) (Kazdin et al., 1986).
Several components of instrument construction and data gathering in this survey lend to high reliability. There were no open-ended questions in this survey, since they may lead to problems with coding error as well as interviewer interpretation (Sudman & Bradburn, 1989). The questions were formulated in language that adolescents would understand.
There are some limitations to the process: The retrospective nature of the data may negatively impact reliability. Many of the respondents had been out of treatment for a good while, and may have had difficulty recalling what drug they may have used or how many AA meetings they attended. Accuracy of on-the-spot data collected in a telephone interview may be limited.
RESULTS
The following is a descriptive analysis of the variables used in this study. Relevant background and demographic information regarding the subjects are presented in Table 2.
Table 2
Descriptive Statistics of the Adolescent Sample
Gender
Male 27 (39%)
Female 42 (60%)
Mean Age 15.5
AA Attendance
Yes 31 (44%)
No 39 (55%)
Prior Treatment
None 34 (50%)
One 22 (32%)
Two 12 (18%)
Family Participation
None 7 (12%)
Some 19 (31%)
All 35 (57%)
Friends' Drug Use
None 30 (43%)
One 17 (24%)
More than one 23 (33%)
Hopelessness Scale (Higher numbers reflect greater hopelessness)
Range 17-34
Mean 21
Mode 20
Note: Percentages may not add up to 100 due to missing data.
A correlation matrix was calculated for all the independent variables (prior treatment, family participation, sex, hopelessness, and friends who use). It was found that all variables had very low correlations with one another, as shown on Table 3, indicating that different constructs were indeed being measured. Thus, they were appropriate for use as predictors in the proposed discriminant analysis.
Next, a stepwise discriminant analysis was performed. This is the method of choice when it is not known how well the proposed variables discriminate between the groups (Klecka, 1980). The stepwise method enters the variables into the predictive equation, one at a time, with the strongest discriminator going in first, as determined by the computer program. The results are presented in Table 4.
The multivariate aspects of the model can be examined by using the canonical discriminant functions (Hair, Anderson, & Tatham, 1987). The canonical correlation is .4842 (p [less than] .006), and by squaring the correlation it can be seen that 23% of the variance in the person's decision to affiliate can be explained by this model that contains four of the independent variables.
Table 3
Correlation Matrix of Predicted Variables
family gender hopelessness friends use
particip-
ation
prior
treatment -.15 -.06 .03 -.11
family
particip. -.09 .16 -.28
gender .02 -.19
hopelessness .08
Table 4
Discriminant Analysis of AA Affiliation
Summary Table
Variable Wilks' Lambda Sig. Min. D Sig.
Squared
Friends Use .882 .008 .531 .008
Family
Participation .826 .005 .836 .005
Hopelessness .792 .005 1.06 .005
Prior
Treatment .766 .006 1.21 .006
Within Groups Centroids and Correlations
Function 1
Group Centroids:
1. Affiliators -.65
2. Nonaffiliators .46
Within Groups Correlations:
Friends who use .66
Prior Treatment -.47
Hopelessness -.32
Family Participation .23
Group centroids can be used to interpret the discriminant function from an overall perspective (Hair et al., 1987). A group centroid is reported since it is "the imaginary point which has coordinates that are the group's mean on each of the variables" (Klecka, 1980, p. 16). They represent the mean of the individual Z-scores for each group. As can be seen, the two groups' centroids differ a great deal, with the affiliator group being larger, indicating more variation within this group.
The within-groups correlations are reported since they show the relationships between the variables in the function - standardized (Klecka, 1980). These scores are then interpreted with the group centroid to determine their contributions to the discriminant function.
Using the stepwise method, it was found that friends who use drugs was the greatest discriminator of the chosen variables between the groups. The next best discriminator was prior treatment, then hopelessness, and finally, family participation in treatment. Sex was not included in the final results since it washed out in the analysis.
According to this data, two variables did predict affiliation as hypothesized: Affiliators are more likely to have friends who use little or no drugs, and they have experienced prior treatment. Contradictory to the hypothesis, however, are the findings that affiliators are more likely to experience feelings of hopelessness and they have received less family participation in their treatment process.
A classification table was produced to assess the predictive accuracy of the function; results appear in Table 5. The 72.9% of correctly classified cases may contain a slight upward bias (Hair et al., 1987). The potential for upward bias is usually identified by using a hold-out sample; however, the sample size in this study was too small to allow for this procedure.
Table 5
Classification Table
Actual Group Number of Predicted Group Membership
Cases Affiliation Non-affiliation
AA affiliation 31 61.3% (19) 38.7% (12)
Non-AA affiliation 39 17.9% (7) 82.1% (32)
Percent of Cases Correctly Classified: 72.86% (100) (19+32/70)
Correct Group Classification:
1. Affiliators 61.3%
2. Nonaffiliators 82.1%
Proportional Chance Criterion: 50.6%
In interpreting the classification data, it is important to compare the percentage of correctly classified cases with the a priori chance of classifying individuals correctly without the discriminant function. Using the proportional chance model one can accurately predict 50.6% of the sample to be AA affiliators or non-AA affiliators. The classification table shows that these variables predict nonaffiliators to an even greater degree. The discriminant function predicts group membership 22% more accurately than does the proportional chance model. Nonaffiliators are more likely to have friends who use drugs, have not experienced prior treatment, are more hopeful, and have had more family participation.
DISCUSSION
There are many limitations to this study in that it was conducted with a small population and that a limited amount of information was obtained from the sample. However, some interesting conclusions can be drawn.
Unfortunately, there were some limitations in the data collection procedures. No other information regarding demographics or other behavioral health diagnoses was obtained. There was also no pretreatment information or measurement to know what kinds of experiences patients brought to treatment, such as prior A.A. affiliation, that may have impacted the study.
Maiso and Connors (1988) recommend that multiple measures be taken, and from more than one source. The data from this study is limited to self-report; it would have made the data more reliable to have corroborating interviews with another informed party, such as a parent. A study by Winters, Stinchfield, Henly, and Henly (1991) did find, however, that adolescents do give consistent reports of their drug use.
While the nonresponse rate appears high (55%), actually only five respondents declined to be interviewed. The rest could not be contacted. This is not unusual in an alcoholic population (Moos, Finney, & Cronkite, 1990). Several studies have addressed the concern with the attrition rate in this population; that is, how difficult it is to find the treated alcoholic. Having only those who are easily located in the final sample analysis may lead to limited inferences since they are usually more stable and exhibit better functioning (Mackenzie, Funderburk, Allen, & Stefan, 1987; Moos et al., 1990). At the most, this study could be generalized only to adolescent addicts/alcoholics who were similar in their demographics (coming from employed families where insurance paid for the treatment), received the same model of treatment, and agreed to participate in a follow-up telephone survey. Further, a great deal is unknown about the respondents.
This study, like the others cited, is influenced by self-selection. What is different however, is that all respondents in the study received the same intervention (treatment with recommendation to attend AA) and then proceeded to affiliate or not affiliate. The respondents were all living in the community at the time of the survey, which eliminates the complicating difficulties of studying hospitalized patients. They include both females and males, and they were all adolescents.
Referrals to Alcoholics Anonymous for continued support upon discharge from treatment are consistently found in treatment plans in most alcoholism treatment centers across the United States. Not all clients follow this advice, or if they do, attendance may be minimal. The characteristic that best predicted affiliation, having friends that do not use drugs, may itself be an effect of the affiliation. Adolescents, once in A.A., may choose to socialize with similar peers they meet there.
The finding that prior treatment is associated with affiliation confirms previous research but can also be of interest to clinicians. It would be interesting to know if this prior treatment was a less restrictive alternative (i.e., outpatient therapy, or if respondents were recidivists). Having a "repeat patient" in treatment can be discouraging, yet this reveals that these youth may be more likely to join A.A. upon discharge than are peers who have not experienced any other treatment.
The finding that affiliators were more hopeless was surprising and conflicts with previous research on support group involvement (Powell, 1990). One explanation may be that the hopelessness scale asked many questions regarding the respondents' views of the future. In A.A., members are told to "live one day at a time" and not focus on the future since they cannot predict or control it. Therefore, to make assertions about a positive future may go against the "here and now" approach of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Finally, it is of interest that family participation was not predictive of affiliation. Hoffman and Kaplan (1991) found that family participation in treatment and in self-help groups after treatment was highly correlative with adolescent abstinence and A.A. affiliation. Alternatively, perhaps parents seek out treatment since they feel helpless to provide the type of parenting skills their adolescents need. While they participate in treatment, many may not make enough therapeutic gains to provide the kind of support their children want or need. The affiliator adolescents may find the support of a self-help program more relevant to their needs. It would be interesting to study how these adolescents perceive support, their parental support, and the type of support they receive through involvement with A.A.
Further research is clearly needed in this area of affiliation since this study shows that affiliators exhibit considerable variation that is difficult to explain. Perhaps a longitudinal study would provide more information, not only of the characteristics of affiliators, but how the process of affiliation is carried out.
CONCLUSIONS
This study of A.A. affiliation was better able to predict characteristics of adolescents who did not affiliate with A.A. than with those who did: Those who had friends who used drugs, had no prior treatment experience, had greater parental involvement while in treatment, and were more hopeful, were less likely to affiliate with A.A. The difficulty with predicting the affiliator group may be because there is more variation in this group.
This study has important implications for practice in that it is an initial attempt to describe adolescents who affiliate with A.A. Referral to Alcoholics Anonymous for adolescent clients who are alcoholic or substance abusers is a standard treatment practice of social workers and addictions counselors. These adolescents are not a homogeneous group, however, and it is important for clinicians to know which clients may benefit most from this type of referral.
An interesting variable that may have an impact on A.A. affiliation that was not considered in the study is the effect of drug or alcohol use itself. Obviously, self-help groups are supportive of abstinence and may attract only those who are abstinent.
A crosstabulation was conducted utilizing the variable of affiliation with self-reported drug and or alcohol use over the prior four weeks. The results are presented in Table 6.
While it is clear that the affiliators were more likely to be abstinent and the nonaffiliators were more likely to have used drugs, not quite half of the nonaffiliator group was abstinent. The abstainers had reached the overall treatment goal (no use of drugs or alcohol), yet only slightly more than half chose to follow through on the referral to affiliate with A.A.
These findings indicate that the original research question still needs exploration. Perhaps it should be expanded to answer more specifically: Who benefits from the Minnesota Model of treatment? Of those who are "treatment successes" (i.e., the abstainers), what qualities or characteristics predict who will benefit from A.A. affiliation? A larger sample of abstaining affiliator and nonaffiliators than was available in this study would be needed to explore these questions.
Table 6
Crosstabulation of Use and Affiliation
Affiliators Non-affiliators
No use of drugs/
alcohol 24 19
(77.4%) (49%)
Has used drugs/
alcohol 7 20
(22.6%) (51%)
The findings of this particular study raise some further questions, particularly those findings that did not go in the direction of the predicted hypothesis. As indicated earlier, it would be interesting to know exactly what kinds of treatment experiences these adolescents had prior to their inpatient treatment. Issues of perception of parental support and how this relates to affiliation could be explored in further detail. Finally, one might want to expand the analysis of personality or behavioral characteristics to include not only hopelessness but locus of control, including issues related to secondary control. If A.A. affiliators are given the message to not worry about the future, that they are powerless over the events of their life, and that they need to trust a higher power, perhaps what is then being measured is secondary control rather than feelings of hopelessness.
REFERENCES
About AA. (1990). AA world service office, Grand Central Station. New York, New York.
Alford, G. (1980). Alcoholics Anonymous: An empirical outcome study. Addictive Behaviors, 5, 359-370.
Boscarino, J. (1980). Factors related to "stable" and "unstable" affiliation with Alcoholics Anonymous. The International Journal of Addictions, 15, 839-848.
Canter, F. (1966). Personality factors related to participation in treatment by hospitalized male alcoholics. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 22, 114-116.
Fontana, A., Dowds, B., & Bethel, M. (1976). AA and group therapy for alcoholics: An application of the world hypotheses scale. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 37, 675-682.
Gorski, T., & Miller, M. (1982). Counseling for relapse prevention. Independence, MO: Independence Press.
Gregson, R., & Taylor, G. (1977). Prediction of relapse in men alcoholics. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 38, 1749-1759.
Gynther, M., & Billiant, P. (1967). Marital status, readmission to hospital, and intrapersonal and interpersonal perceptions of alcoholics. Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcoholism, 28, 52-58.
Hair, J.S. Anderson, R.E., & Tatham, R.L. (1987). Multivariate data analysis. New York: Macmillan.
Hoffman, N., & Kaplan, R. (1991). One-year outcome results for adolescents: Key correlates and benefits of recovery. CATOR Report, 1-21.
Hurlburt, G., Gade, E., & Fuqua, D. (1983). Personality differences between Alcoholics Anonymous members and nonmembers. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 45, 170-171.
Kazdin, A., Rodgers, A., & Colbus, D. (1986). The hopelessness scale for children: Psychometric characteristics and concurrent validity. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 54, 241-245.
Klecka, W. (1980). Discriminant analysis. Beverly Hills: Sage.
Littrell, J. (1991). Understanding and treating alcoholism, Vol. 1. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Mackenzie, A., Funderburk, F., Allen, R., & Stefan, R. (1987). The characteristics of alcoholics frequently lost to follow-up. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 48, 119-123.
Maisto, S., & Connors, G. (1988). Assessment of treatment outcome. In D. Donovan, & G. Marlatt (Eds.), Assessment of addictive behavior. New York: Guilford.
Marlatt, G. (1985). Cognitive factors in the relapse process. In G. Marlatt, & J. Gordon (Eds.), Relapse prevention: Maintenance strategies in the treatment of addictive behaviors. New York: Guilford.
Mayer, R., & Greenwood, E. (1980). The design of social policy research. Englewood, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Mindlin, D. (1964). Attitude toward alcoholism and toward self: Differences in three alcoholic groups. Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcoholism, 25, 136-141.
Moos, R., Finney, J., & Cronkite, R. (1990). Alcoholism treatment: Context, process and outcome. New York: Oxford University Press.
Reilly, D., & Sugarman, A. (1967). Conceptual complexity and psychological differentiation in alcoholics. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 144, 14-17.
O'Leary, M., Calsyn, D., Haddock, D., & Freeman, C. (1980). Differential alcohol use patterns and personality traits among three Alcoholics Anonymous attendance level groups: Further considerations of the affiliation profile. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 5, 135-144.
Sudman, S., & Bradburn, N. (1989). Asking questions. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Trice, H. (1959). The affiliation motive and readiness to join Alcoholics Anonymous. Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 20, 313-320.
Vaillant, G. (1983). The natural history of alcoholism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Winters, K., Stinchfield, R., Henly. G., & Schwartz, R. (1991). Validity of adolescent self-report of alcohol and other drug involvement. The International Journal of the Addictions, 25, 1379-1395.
Melinda Hohman, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, San Diego State University, School of Social Work.
Reprint requests to Craig Winston LeCroy, Ph.D., Professor, School of Social Work, Arizona State University, 2424 E. Broadway, Suite 100, Tucson, Arizona 85719.
COPYRIGHT 1996 Libra Publishers, Inc.
This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.
Alcoholics who receive treatment in in-patient settings are routinely referred to Alcoholics Anonymous upon discharge, yet not all affiliate with A.A. The characteristics of A.A. affiliators have been explored in the past to further improve discharge planning, but to date no studies have described the characteristics of adolescents who affiliate with A.A. The sample used in this study was 70 adolescents who had completed in-patient treatment and were contacted as part of a follow-up survey. Half of the group had affiliated with A.A. A discriminant analysis was used to predict affiliation, and the study found that affiliators were more likely to have had prior treatment, had friends who did not use drugs, had less parental involvement while in treatment, and more feelings of hopelessness. Possible explanations for these findings are discussed as well as areas for further research.
Thousands of teenagers are treated each year in in-patient or residential settings for drug and alcohol dependency. The majority of these programs use the traditional treatment model, also known as the Minnesota Model (Littrell, 1991). This model emphasizes addiction as a disease where one achieves recovery through abstinence, and that one must participate in a support group such as Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) in order to maintain this abstinence. Patients attend AA while hospitalized and are encouraged to continue their attendance upon discharge. AA itself has seen a tremendous growth in membership over the last decade. Currently there are over one million members in the United States alone (About AA, 1990) with approximately 3% of its members being under 21 years of age.
While not every adolescent who receives treatment will affiliate with AA, it is important to study the characteristics of those who do. Because referral to AA is a routine discharge plan, it may help mental health practitioners to know which of their clients may be more likely to join this self-help program. This subject is particularly pertinent because it has not been investigated with the adolescent population.
Various studies have researched A.A. affiliation with the goal of describing who joins AA in the hope that treatment providers could utilize "a more informed basis for treatment planning" (O'Leary, Calsyn, Haddock, & Freeman, 1980, p. 137). An outline of these studies can be found in Table 1.
It is virtually impossible to define the population of abstinent alcoholics, both those in AA and those not so affiliated. One of the strictest traditions of AA is that of anonymity of its members. As can be seen, the samples used in most of these studies were mainly hospitalized, adult males. Using currently hospitalized patients may pose problems because of long-term cognitive impairment (Gorski & Miller, 1982) and what Marlatt (1985) refers to as the abstinence violation effect, which is intense shame, guilt, and hopelessness that A.A. members may feel upon relapse and re-entry into treatment. This effect may bias the responses of the recently relapsed patients who are readmitted. Of all these studies, only Hurlburt, Gade and Fuqua (1983) specified race. Four of the studies used AA to recruit participants, leading to a self-selected sample. The study by Alford (1980) was a follow-up that had a somewhat better sample in that all the respondents had received the same intervention.
As a few of the researchers pointed out, it is hard to ascertain whether respondents had the characteristics studied prior to affiliation with AA or if AA caused them to develop. An example of this is Mindlin's (1964) findings of "less socially ill at ease" and "less loneliness."
At least four of the studies (Fontana, Dowds, & Bethel 1976; Greg-son & Taylor, 1977; Reilly & Sugarman, 1967; Trice, 1959) are similar in their finding that attributes could be categorized as external personality characteristics, such as use of more external sources of authority, religiosity, and formalistic thinking.
Many findings among the studies were contradictory; for example, Boscarino (1980) found less alcohol-related problems, while O'Leary et al. (1980) and Vaillant (1983) found more alcohol-related problems. Hurlburt et al. (1983) found that the AA affiliates were "less emotional" and Reilly and Sugarman (1967) found them to be more sensitive and concerned with acceptance. (See Table 1.)
This review of the literature also indicates that the area of AA affiliation has mainly been researched among adult samples. It was found that females, extroverts, and those who have suffered more alcohol-related problems are more likely to affiliate with A.A.
While A.A. affiliation has not been studied with adolescents, treatment outcome studies provide some relevant information. Hoffman [TABULAR DATA FOR TABLE 1 OMITTED] and Kaplan (1991) found in a study of treated alcoholic adolescents that those whose parents had participated in treatment were more likely to participate in a support group, and the less the teens' peers used drugs, the more likely they were to achieve abstinence.
On the basis of the previous research, the following hypothesis was proposed: Adolescent A.A. affiliation may be predicted by gender (female), the number of prior treatment experiences (indicating more alcohol-related problems), parents' involvement in treatment, fewer peers who use drugs/alcohol, and lower levels of hopelessness (depression).
The purpose of this study was to describe characteristics of treated adolescents who affiliate with Alcoholics Anonymous, and of those who choose not to. A discriminant analysis was conducted to determine if the hypothesized set of variables accurately predict AA affiliation.
METHOD
This study was part of a larger outcome study conducted by a telephone interview survey. The telephone interview is an appropriate method for obtaining sensitive information that a respondent might otherwise be reluctant to give face-to-face (Mayer & Greenwood, 1980). It also provided a greater response than would be received in a mailed questionnaire. Numerous attempts were made to locate the respondents in order to decrease self-selection bias. In this study, the interviewers were neutral parties, having no interest in whether the respondent was "successful." Maisto and Connors (1988) highly recommend this approach.
Sample Population and Data Collection
The population for this study consisted of all patients who were admitted to an adolescent residential treatment facility between May, 1989 and November, 1990. All patients in the study were diagnosed as dependent on drugs and/or alcohol by a psychiatrist, according to DSM III-R criteria. They may or may not have had a secondary behavioral health diagnosis which was treated concurrently. The age range is 12 to 21, with an average age of 15.1. Most of the subjects are from families of middle to upper class incomes; the treatment is funded by third-party insurance.
The interviewers were social work graduate students who received brief training on the purpose and method of interviewing the adolescents. The treatment program supplied the investigator with the names and last known phone numbers of the population to be surveyed. Also provided was treatment background data, such as age, length of stay in treatment, drug of choice, and to whom the patient was discharged. The total population was 155; 80 could not be located, five refused to participate in the survey, and 70 agreed to be interviewed. Of the 70 respondents, 60% were female and 39% were male.
The interviewer introduced him or herself, indicating that an outcome study of the treatment program's former patients was being conducted, and that the interviewer was an independent consultant. Respondents were all assured of the confidentiality of their answers. Verbal consent was then solicited. Finally, the interviewer asked the respondent to be as honest as possible since the answers were very important.
The survey itself asked standard questions regarding abstinence, or if relapsed, the drugs or alcohol used. Also included were variables regarding life satisfaction, mood states, social and family support, self-esteem, thoughts regarding drug/alcohol use and addiction, and self-help activities.
Measures
Six variables were included in this study: A.A. affiliation, gender, prior treatment experiences, parents' involvement in treatment, peers' use of drugs or alcohol, and feelings of hopelessness. They were measured as follows:
A.A. affiliation. This was measured in two ways: first as a dichotomous variable, as to whether the respondent was attending AA, and second as a continuous variable, asking how many times a week they attend meetings.
Gender. This was a dichotomous variable asked at the beginning of the survey.
Number of treatment experiences. Prior treatment experiences were solicited, for both chemical dependency and behavioral health treatment. Because the respondent could interpret these questions in many ways (was previous "treatment" school-based, an out-patient group or individual therapy, or in-patient care?), it was left to respondents to decide what they considered "previous treatment." Both questions were then combined to make a continuous variable.
Parents' involvement in treatment. Respondents were asked if the family participated while they were in treatment. Other measures asked if the various components of family treatment were helpful (individual family therapy, group family therapy, and a family workshop). Regardless of how respondents viewed the helpfulness of these components, those who answered other than "didn't participate" or "missing" were considered as having had parental participation. Those who answered "yes" to the participation question and were involved in individual and group family therapy or the family workshop were considered to have parental involvement. This is because not every family was given the opportunity to participate in the workshop and some families do not go to the workshop because it is too far.
Peers' use of drugs/alcohol. Respondents were asked about friends who regularly use drugs or alcohol. Their responses were classified as "none," "only one," or "a few."
Hopelessness. The hopelessness scale used in the study is a measure of depression which manifests as isolation, loneliness, and introversion, the opposite of affiliator behaviors found in Mindlin (1964) and Hurlburt et al. (1983). This was measured by the Hopelessness Scale for Children developed by Kazdin, Rodgers, and Colbus (1986). The scale contains 27 items wherein the respondent indicates "yes" or "no" to each item. A cumulative index is generated varying from 17 to 34, higher scores indicating greater hopelessness.
This scale was originally evaluated on 262 child psychiatric inpatients, ages 6 to 13. The reliability of the scale measured by internal consistency, yielded a coefficient alpha of .97 and a Spearman-Brown split-half reliability of .96. To determine the validity of the scale, its scores were correlated with measures of depression, self-esteem, and social behavior. Resulting correlations indicated significant relations in the predicted direction. Hopelessness was found to be positively correlated with depression (r = .58) and negatively correlated with self-esteem (r = -.61) and social skills (r = -.39) (Kazdin et al., 1986).
Several components of instrument construction and data gathering in this survey lend to high reliability. There were no open-ended questions in this survey, since they may lead to problems with coding error as well as interviewer interpretation (Sudman & Bradburn, 1989). The questions were formulated in language that adolescents would understand.
There are some limitations to the process: The retrospective nature of the data may negatively impact reliability. Many of the respondents had been out of treatment for a good while, and may have had difficulty recalling what drug they may have used or how many AA meetings they attended. Accuracy of on-the-spot data collected in a telephone interview may be limited.
RESULTS
The following is a descriptive analysis of the variables used in this study. Relevant background and demographic information regarding the subjects are presented in Table 2.
Table 2
Descriptive Statistics of the Adolescent Sample
Gender
Male 27 (39%)
Female 42 (60%)
Mean Age 15.5
AA Attendance
Yes 31 (44%)
No 39 (55%)
Prior Treatment
None 34 (50%)
One 22 (32%)
Two 12 (18%)
Family Participation
None 7 (12%)
Some 19 (31%)
All 35 (57%)
Friends' Drug Use
None 30 (43%)
One 17 (24%)
More than one 23 (33%)
Hopelessness Scale (Higher numbers reflect greater hopelessness)
Range 17-34
Mean 21
Mode 20
Note: Percentages may not add up to 100 due to missing data.
A correlation matrix was calculated for all the independent variables (prior treatment, family participation, sex, hopelessness, and friends who use). It was found that all variables had very low correlations with one another, as shown on Table 3, indicating that different constructs were indeed being measured. Thus, they were appropriate for use as predictors in the proposed discriminant analysis.
Next, a stepwise discriminant analysis was performed. This is the method of choice when it is not known how well the proposed variables discriminate between the groups (Klecka, 1980). The stepwise method enters the variables into the predictive equation, one at a time, with the strongest discriminator going in first, as determined by the computer program. The results are presented in Table 4.
The multivariate aspects of the model can be examined by using the canonical discriminant functions (Hair, Anderson, & Tatham, 1987). The canonical correlation is .4842 (p [less than] .006), and by squaring the correlation it can be seen that 23% of the variance in the person's decision to affiliate can be explained by this model that contains four of the independent variables.
Table 3
Correlation Matrix of Predicted Variables
family gender hopelessness friends use
particip-
ation
prior
treatment -.15 -.06 .03 -.11
family
particip. -.09 .16 -.28
gender .02 -.19
hopelessness .08
Table 4
Discriminant Analysis of AA Affiliation
Summary Table
Variable Wilks' Lambda Sig. Min. D Sig.
Squared
Friends Use .882 .008 .531 .008
Family
Participation .826 .005 .836 .005
Hopelessness .792 .005 1.06 .005
Prior
Treatment .766 .006 1.21 .006
Within Groups Centroids and Correlations
Function 1
Group Centroids:
1. Affiliators -.65
2. Nonaffiliators .46
Within Groups Correlations:
Friends who use .66
Prior Treatment -.47
Hopelessness -.32
Family Participation .23
Group centroids can be used to interpret the discriminant function from an overall perspective (Hair et al., 1987). A group centroid is reported since it is "the imaginary point which has coordinates that are the group's mean on each of the variables" (Klecka, 1980, p. 16). They represent the mean of the individual Z-scores for each group. As can be seen, the two groups' centroids differ a great deal, with the affiliator group being larger, indicating more variation within this group.
The within-groups correlations are reported since they show the relationships between the variables in the function - standardized (Klecka, 1980). These scores are then interpreted with the group centroid to determine their contributions to the discriminant function.
Using the stepwise method, it was found that friends who use drugs was the greatest discriminator of the chosen variables between the groups. The next best discriminator was prior treatment, then hopelessness, and finally, family participation in treatment. Sex was not included in the final results since it washed out in the analysis.
According to this data, two variables did predict affiliation as hypothesized: Affiliators are more likely to have friends who use little or no drugs, and they have experienced prior treatment. Contradictory to the hypothesis, however, are the findings that affiliators are more likely to experience feelings of hopelessness and they have received less family participation in their treatment process.
A classification table was produced to assess the predictive accuracy of the function; results appear in Table 5. The 72.9% of correctly classified cases may contain a slight upward bias (Hair et al., 1987). The potential for upward bias is usually identified by using a hold-out sample; however, the sample size in this study was too small to allow for this procedure.
Table 5
Classification Table
Actual Group Number of Predicted Group Membership
Cases Affiliation Non-affiliation
AA affiliation 31 61.3% (19) 38.7% (12)
Non-AA affiliation 39 17.9% (7) 82.1% (32)
Percent of Cases Correctly Classified: 72.86% (100) (19+32/70)
Correct Group Classification:
1. Affiliators 61.3%
2. Nonaffiliators 82.1%
Proportional Chance Criterion: 50.6%
In interpreting the classification data, it is important to compare the percentage of correctly classified cases with the a priori chance of classifying individuals correctly without the discriminant function. Using the proportional chance model one can accurately predict 50.6% of the sample to be AA affiliators or non-AA affiliators. The classification table shows that these variables predict nonaffiliators to an even greater degree. The discriminant function predicts group membership 22% more accurately than does the proportional chance model. Nonaffiliators are more likely to have friends who use drugs, have not experienced prior treatment, are more hopeful, and have had more family participation.
DISCUSSION
There are many limitations to this study in that it was conducted with a small population and that a limited amount of information was obtained from the sample. However, some interesting conclusions can be drawn.
Unfortunately, there were some limitations in the data collection procedures. No other information regarding demographics or other behavioral health diagnoses was obtained. There was also no pretreatment information or measurement to know what kinds of experiences patients brought to treatment, such as prior A.A. affiliation, that may have impacted the study.
Maiso and Connors (1988) recommend that multiple measures be taken, and from more than one source. The data from this study is limited to self-report; it would have made the data more reliable to have corroborating interviews with another informed party, such as a parent. A study by Winters, Stinchfield, Henly, and Henly (1991) did find, however, that adolescents do give consistent reports of their drug use.
While the nonresponse rate appears high (55%), actually only five respondents declined to be interviewed. The rest could not be contacted. This is not unusual in an alcoholic population (Moos, Finney, & Cronkite, 1990). Several studies have addressed the concern with the attrition rate in this population; that is, how difficult it is to find the treated alcoholic. Having only those who are easily located in the final sample analysis may lead to limited inferences since they are usually more stable and exhibit better functioning (Mackenzie, Funderburk, Allen, & Stefan, 1987; Moos et al., 1990). At the most, this study could be generalized only to adolescent addicts/alcoholics who were similar in their demographics (coming from employed families where insurance paid for the treatment), received the same model of treatment, and agreed to participate in a follow-up telephone survey. Further, a great deal is unknown about the respondents.
This study, like the others cited, is influenced by self-selection. What is different however, is that all respondents in the study received the same intervention (treatment with recommendation to attend AA) and then proceeded to affiliate or not affiliate. The respondents were all living in the community at the time of the survey, which eliminates the complicating difficulties of studying hospitalized patients. They include both females and males, and they were all adolescents.
Referrals to Alcoholics Anonymous for continued support upon discharge from treatment are consistently found in treatment plans in most alcoholism treatment centers across the United States. Not all clients follow this advice, or if they do, attendance may be minimal. The characteristic that best predicted affiliation, having friends that do not use drugs, may itself be an effect of the affiliation. Adolescents, once in A.A., may choose to socialize with similar peers they meet there.
The finding that prior treatment is associated with affiliation confirms previous research but can also be of interest to clinicians. It would be interesting to know if this prior treatment was a less restrictive alternative (i.e., outpatient therapy, or if respondents were recidivists). Having a "repeat patient" in treatment can be discouraging, yet this reveals that these youth may be more likely to join A.A. upon discharge than are peers who have not experienced any other treatment.
The finding that affiliators were more hopeless was surprising and conflicts with previous research on support group involvement (Powell, 1990). One explanation may be that the hopelessness scale asked many questions regarding the respondents' views of the future. In A.A., members are told to "live one day at a time" and not focus on the future since they cannot predict or control it. Therefore, to make assertions about a positive future may go against the "here and now" approach of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Finally, it is of interest that family participation was not predictive of affiliation. Hoffman and Kaplan (1991) found that family participation in treatment and in self-help groups after treatment was highly correlative with adolescent abstinence and A.A. affiliation. Alternatively, perhaps parents seek out treatment since they feel helpless to provide the type of parenting skills their adolescents need. While they participate in treatment, many may not make enough therapeutic gains to provide the kind of support their children want or need. The affiliator adolescents may find the support of a self-help program more relevant to their needs. It would be interesting to study how these adolescents perceive support, their parental support, and the type of support they receive through involvement with A.A.
Further research is clearly needed in this area of affiliation since this study shows that affiliators exhibit considerable variation that is difficult to explain. Perhaps a longitudinal study would provide more information, not only of the characteristics of affiliators, but how the process of affiliation is carried out.
CONCLUSIONS
This study of A.A. affiliation was better able to predict characteristics of adolescents who did not affiliate with A.A. than with those who did: Those who had friends who used drugs, had no prior treatment experience, had greater parental involvement while in treatment, and were more hopeful, were less likely to affiliate with A.A. The difficulty with predicting the affiliator group may be because there is more variation in this group.
This study has important implications for practice in that it is an initial attempt to describe adolescents who affiliate with A.A. Referral to Alcoholics Anonymous for adolescent clients who are alcoholic or substance abusers is a standard treatment practice of social workers and addictions counselors. These adolescents are not a homogeneous group, however, and it is important for clinicians to know which clients may benefit most from this type of referral.
An interesting variable that may have an impact on A.A. affiliation that was not considered in the study is the effect of drug or alcohol use itself. Obviously, self-help groups are supportive of abstinence and may attract only those who are abstinent.
A crosstabulation was conducted utilizing the variable of affiliation with self-reported drug and or alcohol use over the prior four weeks. The results are presented in Table 6.
While it is clear that the affiliators were more likely to be abstinent and the nonaffiliators were more likely to have used drugs, not quite half of the nonaffiliator group was abstinent. The abstainers had reached the overall treatment goal (no use of drugs or alcohol), yet only slightly more than half chose to follow through on the referral to affiliate with A.A.
These findings indicate that the original research question still needs exploration. Perhaps it should be expanded to answer more specifically: Who benefits from the Minnesota Model of treatment? Of those who are "treatment successes" (i.e., the abstainers), what qualities or characteristics predict who will benefit from A.A. affiliation? A larger sample of abstaining affiliator and nonaffiliators than was available in this study would be needed to explore these questions.
Table 6
Crosstabulation of Use and Affiliation
Affiliators Non-affiliators
No use of drugs/
alcohol 24 19
(77.4%) (49%)
Has used drugs/
alcohol 7 20
(22.6%) (51%)
The findings of this particular study raise some further questions, particularly those findings that did not go in the direction of the predicted hypothesis. As indicated earlier, it would be interesting to know exactly what kinds of treatment experiences these adolescents had prior to their inpatient treatment. Issues of perception of parental support and how this relates to affiliation could be explored in further detail. Finally, one might want to expand the analysis of personality or behavioral characteristics to include not only hopelessness but locus of control, including issues related to secondary control. If A.A. affiliators are given the message to not worry about the future, that they are powerless over the events of their life, and that they need to trust a higher power, perhaps what is then being measured is secondary control rather than feelings of hopelessness.
REFERENCES
About AA. (1990). AA world service office, Grand Central Station. New York, New York.
Alford, G. (1980). Alcoholics Anonymous: An empirical outcome study. Addictive Behaviors, 5, 359-370.
Boscarino, J. (1980). Factors related to "stable" and "unstable" affiliation with Alcoholics Anonymous. The International Journal of Addictions, 15, 839-848.
Canter, F. (1966). Personality factors related to participation in treatment by hospitalized male alcoholics. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 22, 114-116.
Fontana, A., Dowds, B., & Bethel, M. (1976). AA and group therapy for alcoholics: An application of the world hypotheses scale. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 37, 675-682.
Gorski, T., & Miller, M. (1982). Counseling for relapse prevention. Independence, MO: Independence Press.
Gregson, R., & Taylor, G. (1977). Prediction of relapse in men alcoholics. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 38, 1749-1759.
Gynther, M., & Billiant, P. (1967). Marital status, readmission to hospital, and intrapersonal and interpersonal perceptions of alcoholics. Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcoholism, 28, 52-58.
Hair, J.S. Anderson, R.E., & Tatham, R.L. (1987). Multivariate data analysis. New York: Macmillan.
Hoffman, N., & Kaplan, R. (1991). One-year outcome results for adolescents: Key correlates and benefits of recovery. CATOR Report, 1-21.
Hurlburt, G., Gade, E., & Fuqua, D. (1983). Personality differences between Alcoholics Anonymous members and nonmembers. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 45, 170-171.
Kazdin, A., Rodgers, A., & Colbus, D. (1986). The hopelessness scale for children: Psychometric characteristics and concurrent validity. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 54, 241-245.
Klecka, W. (1980). Discriminant analysis. Beverly Hills: Sage.
Littrell, J. (1991). Understanding and treating alcoholism, Vol. 1. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Mackenzie, A., Funderburk, F., Allen, R., & Stefan, R. (1987). The characteristics of alcoholics frequently lost to follow-up. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 48, 119-123.
Maisto, S., & Connors, G. (1988). Assessment of treatment outcome. In D. Donovan, & G. Marlatt (Eds.), Assessment of addictive behavior. New York: Guilford.
Marlatt, G. (1985). Cognitive factors in the relapse process. In G. Marlatt, & J. Gordon (Eds.), Relapse prevention: Maintenance strategies in the treatment of addictive behaviors. New York: Guilford.
Mayer, R., & Greenwood, E. (1980). The design of social policy research. Englewood, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Mindlin, D. (1964). Attitude toward alcoholism and toward self: Differences in three alcoholic groups. Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcoholism, 25, 136-141.
Moos, R., Finney, J., & Cronkite, R. (1990). Alcoholism treatment: Context, process and outcome. New York: Oxford University Press.
Reilly, D., & Sugarman, A. (1967). Conceptual complexity and psychological differentiation in alcoholics. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 144, 14-17.
O'Leary, M., Calsyn, D., Haddock, D., & Freeman, C. (1980). Differential alcohol use patterns and personality traits among three Alcoholics Anonymous attendance level groups: Further considerations of the affiliation profile. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 5, 135-144.
Sudman, S., & Bradburn, N. (1989). Asking questions. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Trice, H. (1959). The affiliation motive and readiness to join Alcoholics Anonymous. Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 20, 313-320.
Vaillant, G. (1983). The natural history of alcoholism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Winters, K., Stinchfield, R., Henly. G., & Schwartz, R. (1991). Validity of adolescent self-report of alcohol and other drug involvement. The International Journal of the Addictions, 25, 1379-1395.
Melinda Hohman, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, San Diego State University, School of Social Work.
Reprint requests to Craig Winston LeCroy, Ph.D., Professor, School of Social Work, Arizona State University, 2424 E. Broadway, Suite 100, Tucson, Arizona 85719.
COPYRIGHT 1996 Libra Publishers, Inc.
This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Sean Young Enters Rehab
SEAN YOUNG The actress checked into rehab on Tuesday after having to be escorted out of the DGA Awards over the weekend
Michael Buckner/Getty Images
A rep confirms that the 48-year-old actress is receiving treatment for alcohol abuse following an outburst at Saturday's DGA Awards
(FROM AP) - Sean Young, 48, has voluntarily entered rehab for alcohol abuse, according to a rep. The announcement comes on the heels of an outburst at Saturday night's Directors Guild Awards, which caused the actress to be escorted out of the event. ''Sean Young voluntarily admitted herself yesterday to a rehabilitation center for treatment related to alcoholism,'' a statement from Insignia PR said Tuesday. ''It is understood that Young has struggled against the disease for many years.''
At Saturday's DGA awards, Young was heard throughout the ballroom heckling director Julian Schnabel during his speech as a nominee for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. When Schnabel realized that it was Young heckling him, he suggested that she ''have another cocktail.'' The actress was subsequently removed from the venue.
Young became famous in the 1980s for movies like Stripes, Blade Runner, and No Way Out. But in recent years she's been better known for bizarre behavior, including dressing up in a homemade cat suit in an attempt to land the role of Catwoman in Batman Returns and trying to crash Vanity Fair's Oscar party in 2006. (AP)
A rep confirms that the 48-year-old actress is receiving treatment for alcohol abuse following an outburst at Saturday's DGA Awards
(FROM AP) - Sean Young, 48, has voluntarily entered rehab for alcohol abuse, according to a rep. The announcement comes on the heels of an outburst at Saturday night's Directors Guild Awards, which caused the actress to be escorted out of the event. ''Sean Young voluntarily admitted herself yesterday to a rehabilitation center for treatment related to alcoholism,'' a statement from Insignia PR said Tuesday. ''It is understood that Young has struggled against the disease for many years.''
At Saturday's DGA awards, Young was heard throughout the ballroom heckling director Julian Schnabel during his speech as a nominee for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. When Schnabel realized that it was Young heckling him, he suggested that she ''have another cocktail.'' The actress was subsequently removed from the venue.
Young became famous in the 1980s for movies like Stripes, Blade Runner, and No Way Out. But in recent years she's been better known for bizarre behavior, including dressing up in a homemade cat suit in an attempt to land the role of Catwoman in Batman Returns and trying to crash Vanity Fair's Oscar party in 2006. (AP)
Tobin ordered to undergo mental health treatment
Baltimore Business Journal - by Larry Rulison Staff
Former Network Technologies Group Inc. CEO Michele Tobin is required to undergo mental health treatment and alcohol counseling as she awaits sentencing after pleading guilty last month in U.S. District Court in Baltimore to one count of wire fraud.
Tobin was CEO of the Fells Point telecommunications firm when senior executives, including Tobin, allegedly doctored financial records to attract more than $5 million in loans and venture capital financing. Tobin and three other executives were indicted Jan. 22 by a federal grand jury on ten counts of mail, wire and bank fraud.
Tobin pleaded guilty Feb. 20 to one count of wire fraud. Federal prosecutors dropped the remaining nine counts of fraud in exchange for her cooperation in prosecuting the case. She faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine on the charge, but her cooperation should lower that significantly.
Thomas Bray, the former chief financial officer, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud Feb. 27. But the two other company officers charged in the alleged scheme — Victor Giordani Jr., the former chief operating officer, and Beverly Baker, the former controller — have both pleaded not guilty and are awaiting trial in April.
Both Tobin and Bray have been released pending sentencing as long as they cooperate with prosecutors. Except for surrendering his passport, Bray did not have any special conditions placed on his release. Both will be sentenced in May after any trial.
However, Tobin, who now lives in Colorado near the resort town of Vail, has several special conditions she must meet until then, including refraining from using alcohol and participating in alcohol counseling, according to documents filed with U.S. District Court. She also must "participate in mental health treatment," according to the documents.
Those conditions were never mentioned in open court during Tobin's Feb. 20 hearing, although Tobin's lawyer, Joseph "Wick" Sollers and prosecutors did confer with U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz at his bench at one point during the hearing — but that discussion was inaudible to observers.
Tobin would not speak to reporters when she appeared in court Feb. 20. She told NTG employees she was suffering from cancer when she resigned June 28. When she appeared in court in Baltimore, Tobin looked bald and had a scarf wrapped around her head. She also looked weak and pale. Her cancer was never mentioned during the entire proceeding, although the judge told her she did not have to stand during the hearing.
A message left with Sollers was not immediately returned. Tobin could not be reached for comment. A call to the U.S. Attorney's office was not immediately returned.
Former Network Technologies Group Inc. CEO Michele Tobin is required to undergo mental health treatment and alcohol counseling as she awaits sentencing after pleading guilty last month in U.S. District Court in Baltimore to one count of wire fraud.
Tobin was CEO of the Fells Point telecommunications firm when senior executives, including Tobin, allegedly doctored financial records to attract more than $5 million in loans and venture capital financing. Tobin and three other executives were indicted Jan. 22 by a federal grand jury on ten counts of mail, wire and bank fraud.
Tobin pleaded guilty Feb. 20 to one count of wire fraud. Federal prosecutors dropped the remaining nine counts of fraud in exchange for her cooperation in prosecuting the case. She faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine on the charge, but her cooperation should lower that significantly.
Thomas Bray, the former chief financial officer, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud Feb. 27. But the two other company officers charged in the alleged scheme — Victor Giordani Jr., the former chief operating officer, and Beverly Baker, the former controller — have both pleaded not guilty and are awaiting trial in April.
Both Tobin and Bray have been released pending sentencing as long as they cooperate with prosecutors. Except for surrendering his passport, Bray did not have any special conditions placed on his release. Both will be sentenced in May after any trial.
However, Tobin, who now lives in Colorado near the resort town of Vail, has several special conditions she must meet until then, including refraining from using alcohol and participating in alcohol counseling, according to documents filed with U.S. District Court. She also must "participate in mental health treatment," according to the documents.
Those conditions were never mentioned in open court during Tobin's Feb. 20 hearing, although Tobin's lawyer, Joseph "Wick" Sollers and prosecutors did confer with U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz at his bench at one point during the hearing — but that discussion was inaudible to observers.
Tobin would not speak to reporters when she appeared in court Feb. 20. She told NTG employees she was suffering from cancer when she resigned June 28. When she appeared in court in Baltimore, Tobin looked bald and had a scarf wrapped around her head. She also looked weak and pale. Her cancer was never mentioned during the entire proceeding, although the judge told her she did not have to stand during the hearing.
A message left with Sollers was not immediately returned. Tobin could not be reached for comment. A call to the U.S. Attorney's office was not immediately returned.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Golf ball ad with Daly, alcohol leaves bad taste
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By Michael Hiestand, USA TODAY
There's a certain logic to making edgy ads networks will refuse to carry, especially if you're trying to wake up a sleepy brand.
You get publicity from being banned.
That presumably drives viewers to your website to see what they have to be protected against. And you don't have to spend much.
But Maxfli might pay a price for an ad campaign starring an active athlete, who probably has the sports world's best-known problem with alcohol, cavorting about in an on-air atmosphere as boozy as any beer ad — to sell golf balls, of all things.
In a sort of music video parody, golfer John Daly — who had two major titles and two trips to alcohol rehab before turning 30 — is seen whizzing around a golf cart and grabbing a beer out of a guy's mouth. He also plays guitar and sings "go long or go home" to hype the new Maxfli Fire ball billed as delivering "mind-blowing ball speed" in a rowdy bar, where we see a woman's undergarments thrown at him in appreciation.
Actually, the whole thing would be funny if, say, Vijay Singh or Davis Love III — how about Jim Nantz? — had been cast as the ad's lead libertine. But it isn't with Daly, who's been quite open about his alcohol-related problems.
CBS refuses to air the ad, spokeswoman LeslieAnne Wade says, because it violates network guidelines prohibiting ads "with direct, or implied, excessive consumption of alcohol," especially when an ad also "involves hazardous activity."
OK, fine: Now we can all go to maxfli.com to check out the video just like the marketing master plan intended.
WHERE TO SEE IT: Go to maxfli.com, click on 'John's RV' tab
There you can find the ad's 90-second "uncut" version, where a woman in the bar appears to lift her blouse to flash Daly, who's also seen doing a semi-wheelie in a golf cart. Talk about hijinks!
Except that wasn't the plan, Maxfli senior director of marketing Bob Maggiore says: "We were shocked CBS drew those conclusions. They were looking through the wrong lens — it was never intended to be any of that. … It's like this came out of left field."
Still, he is drinking behind the wheel.
"But he's in a golf cart," Maggiore says. "And if operating a golf cart like that was a crime, police could find plenty of easy sobriety checkpoints at 10th greens."
Don't laugh. We might see those when the Baby Boomers all hit retirement.
Michael Mark, creative director-CEO of San Diego-based NYCA Advertising, which made the Maxfli ad, says CBS' view is "completely outdated. I understand the sensitivity of the world now. But this is life. Beer is part of golf."
In case you don't happen to know golf rules, you should know that Mark isn't being literal.
"There's 19 holes in golf," he says. "They have golf cart girls (dispensing beer) in everyday golf. … And you don't see the guy guzzling a keg."
You can go to maxfli.com to see a keg in the living room of the home described as Daly's RV.
Maxfli, Mark says, is a "historic" brand, whose endorsers included Jack Nicklaus and Greg Norman, that's "become less relevant to golfers" that needed to be repositioned with a "rebel" Daly. "You watch Tiger Woods. Who looks like him? Nobody. But showing Daly just as he is, that's going to grow the game of golf. It's almost like reality TV. This is reality commercials."
The Golf Channel, whose Daly Planet reality show last year followed Daly and included his drinking — "but our producers used discretion," spokesman Dan Higgins says — has already aired the Maxfli ad.
Says Higgins: "Although the spot passed our criteria and our mature audience is more familiar with John Daly as one of golf's larger-than-life characters, we're sensitive to the issues at hand and are looking into other viable options to running the commercial."
Maxfli, adman Mark says, would like to air the ad on NBC.
NBC's Brian Walker said Tuesday, "We can't comment on an ad that hasn't been submitted."
Many viewers might see Daly as the golf pro they'd most like to hang out with. But casting him to co-star with beer to sell stuff seems as odd as putting Alec Baldwin in any new ad for fancy voice-mail service.
Spice rack: New York radio station WFAN says Boomer Esiason will fill Don Imus' old time slot next week. … Veteran sports producer Michael Weisman has been named the new executive in charge of the NBC Sunday night NFL studio show. Says NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol: "We probably went a little too far just getting the train on the tracks (last season) and not far enough in having fun."
Click Fraud: Defining the Context of a Problem
Click Fraud: Defining the Context of a Problem
Copyright © 2006-2008 Jim Hedger, All Rights Reserved
Everyone involved in search marketing considers Click Fraud a problem issue though to what degree problems exist depends on who is looking at the issues. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) search advertising is the golden goose that makes the major engines financially viable but the success of the PPC model, mixed with the nature of the 'net can make PPC advertising a double-edged sword for advertisers.
This is the first piece in an ongoing series on Click Fraud we will be running in SiteProNews and SEO-News. Many in the search marketing and search advertising industries would prefer the issue be avoided altogether. Paid search advertising has grown to become a rapidly expanding multi-billion dollar industry, much of it based on the success of PPC.
According to a recent study, "US Online Advertising Forecast, 2005 to 2011" (http://www.marketingvox.com/archives/2006/07/24/ online_advertising_to_reach_nine_percent_of_total_ad_spend_by_2011/), by JupiterResearch, $6.5-billion will be spent on search advertising in 2006, a figure that is projected to jump to $11-billion over the next five years. Click Fraud, which is estimated to range from 5% - 15% of PPC traffic (some estimates are as high as 20% - 35%) could therefore be a factor in $350-million to $975-million worth of click-transactions. There is a lot of money involved in PPC and the tremendous weight of financial interest lurks somewhere behind virtually any discussion of the issue, especially a discussion about Click Fraud.
The share values of giants such as Google, and to a lesser degree, Yahoo!, Time Warner, AOL, IAC and MSN rely on advertiser confidence in paid search advertising. A massive amount of search marketing spam is created to generate high PPC payouts, which are shared between the search engines and web publishers. There are a number of legitimate SEM agencies turning a tidy profit by charging a percentage of the monthly or annual ad-spend of their clients. With so much money at stake, it's little wonder the biggest players in the search engine and search marketing industries would want to keep the issue under wraps.
This series is going to explore issues associated with Click Fraud from several angles, starting with an attempt to define the issue from a few different points of view. In subsequent articles we will focus on motives and opportunities, technologies and techniques, detection and deception, and alternative search based advertising methods outside the realm of PPC. We expect to touch on a number of other points, many of which will overlap from article to article, during the development of the series.
A good place to start would be an attempt at defining what, exactly, constitutes Click Fraud. In this case, the breadth of the beast is measured in the eye of the beholder.
The Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invalid_click) offers the best definition saying, "Click fraud occurs in pay per click online advertising when a person, automated script, or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating an improper charge per click. Click fraud is the subject of some controversy and increasing litigation due to the advertising networks being a key beneficiary of the fraud whether they like it or not."
Of the search engines themselves, Google provides the simplest, most direct definition. Yahoo! offers a 13-point FAQ that fails to actually provide an exact definition. MSN and Ask also provide fairly good descriptions of the issue and remedies for advertisers. None of the major PPC providers offer advertisers an indication of how complicated click fraud analysis can be.
Google's Definition
Google doesn't like to use the term Click Fraud, preferring a phrase that conveys far fewer implications, "invalid clicks".
According to the Google AdWords Learning Center (http://www.google.com/adwords/learningcenter/text/19457.html), "Invalid clicks are clicks generated by prohibited methods. Examples of invalid clicks may include repeated manual clicking or the use of robots, automated clicking tools, or other deceptive software. Invalid clicks are sometimes intended to artificially and/or maliciously drive up an advertiser's clicks and or a publisher's earnings."
Google provides instruction on how to deal with and report suspicions of click fraud and outlines how to initiate an investigation.
Yahoo!'s Definition
Yahoo! doesn't mind using the phrase Click Fraud. A prominent text-link on the front page of the Yahoo! Search Marketing site leads to the Y!SM Click Fraud FAQ (http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/legal/clickfraud.php) page.
On it, Yahoo! says, "Click fraud is generally considered to be clicks made with bad faith with the sole purpose of generating a charge to the advertiser with zero possibility of a legitimate site visit or transaction occurring. We agree." No clear definition of Click Fraud is provided, aside from Yahoo!'s agreement with a general statement describing it. Apparently, defining click fraud is complicated.
The FAQ suggests it is difficult to judge the purpose of clicks through its network because it is technically impossible to read people's minds. (Ed. note: We agree.) Instead, it is forced to fall back on analysing click behaviour, spotting identifiable patterns in click traffic, trying to define the faith of each click. Yahoo!'s FAQ continues, saying, "In terms of identifiable behavior, we define click fraud as detected illegitimate bots and certain repetitive clicks."
The next paragraph on the FAQ page should be of concern to advertisers. It introduces the phrase, "Traffic Quality Clicks", a phrase describing all clicks that are not generated by (identifiable) click fraud. This includes, "... clicks from domestic and international users and clicks from our various distribution channels and products." A small but scary number of Yahoo!'s distribution channels and products have been linked to malware, spyware and click-bot networks, as a coming article in this series will examine. Come to think of it, someone at Yahoo! needs to take a look at that FAQ page immediately, we're going to and we thing Y!SM marketers should as well.
Microsoft's Definition
MSN, which broke into the PPC market later than its rivals did, shares Google's aversion to the phrase "Click Fraud", agreeing to refer to the problem of "Invalid Clicks" (http://advertising.msn.com/microsoft-adcenter/faqs/invalid-clicks). An FAQ entry offers a short and direct definition of what they consider an Invalid Click saying, "An invalid click is a type of non-billable click resulting from user error, malicious activity or other factors potentially indicative of fraudulent activity."
In a subsequent statement, MSN acknowledges invalid click activity will occur saying, "Any unexplained changes in click activity should be reviewed for validity." The FAQ section goes on to explain how to monitor and appeal click charges.
Ask's Definition
Ask's new Sponsored Listing PPC considers Click Fraud to be an industry problem. Ask's Traffic Quality page (http://sponsoredlistings.ask.com/trafficquality.php) opens with the headline, "We protect you against click fraud."
Ask suggests, "Valid clicks are clicks on a listing that are generated by humans, whose intent we judge to be to engage the advertiser's site (such as to make a purchase, register for services, or navigate content.). Invalid clicks are clicks generated by robots, systems or software whose intent we judge not to be to engage the advertiser's site."
The rest of the page goes into great detail describing how Ask identifies invalid click behavior, mentioning several factors it uses to assess the validity of each click.
Industry Analysts
In a March 26, 2006 iMediaConnection (http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/8830.asp) article analyzing Google's settlement of a major click fraud case called Lane's Gifts v. Google, Clickfacts (http://www.clickfacts.com) cofounder, Michael Caruso provides a well rounded description,
"With pay-per-click ads that show up next to search results, the more times an ad is clicked, the more the advertiser pays. With contextual ads, where ads are placed on third-party websites, pay-per-click ad revenue is split between the publisher and the search company, such as Google.
Sometimes publishers click their own sites to get more revenue from the search engines. Webmasters sometimes form partnerships to click on each other's advertisements. Sometimes people click on their competition's ads, just to drive up their costs. CNET reported, "...the chief executive of an internet marketing company, enjoys clicking on his rivals' text ads ... his competitor must pay as much as $15 each time." There is also bot-like software all over the internet through anonymous "proxy" servers scattered in far-flung locales, creating the illusion that visitors are logging on from all over the place, masking the traffic's true origin.
Then there are even software companies with names like Fakezilla that sell traffic simulators online intended to make sites appear popular and thus boost ranking on search engine pages. They are also used for click fraud."
Six definitive acknowledgements of invalid click activity later, we can all agree that click fraud is a very complicated and very real problem. Stay tuned as we explore it.
About The Author:
Search marketing expert Jim Hedger is one of the most prolific writers in the search sector with articles appearing in numerous search related websites and newsletters, including SiteProNews, Search Engine Journal, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide.
He is currently Senior Editor for the Jayde Online news sources SEO-News (http://www.seo-news.com) and SiteProNews (http://www.sitepronews.com). You can also find additional tips and news on webmaster and SEO topics by Jim at the SiteProNews blog (http://blog.sitepronews.com/).
Copyright © 2006-2008 Jim Hedger, All Rights Reserved
Everyone involved in search marketing considers Click Fraud a problem issue though to what degree problems exist depends on who is looking at the issues. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) search advertising is the golden goose that makes the major engines financially viable but the success of the PPC model, mixed with the nature of the 'net can make PPC advertising a double-edged sword for advertisers.
This is the first piece in an ongoing series on Click Fraud we will be running in SiteProNews and SEO-News. Many in the search marketing and search advertising industries would prefer the issue be avoided altogether. Paid search advertising has grown to become a rapidly expanding multi-billion dollar industry, much of it based on the success of PPC.
According to a recent study, "US Online Advertising Forecast, 2005 to 2011" (http://www.marketingvox.com/archives/2006/07/24/ online_advertising_to_reach_nine_percent_of_total_ad_spend_by_2011/), by JupiterResearch, $6.5-billion will be spent on search advertising in 2006, a figure that is projected to jump to $11-billion over the next five years. Click Fraud, which is estimated to range from 5% - 15% of PPC traffic (some estimates are as high as 20% - 35%) could therefore be a factor in $350-million to $975-million worth of click-transactions. There is a lot of money involved in PPC and the tremendous weight of financial interest lurks somewhere behind virtually any discussion of the issue, especially a discussion about Click Fraud.
The share values of giants such as Google, and to a lesser degree, Yahoo!, Time Warner, AOL, IAC and MSN rely on advertiser confidence in paid search advertising. A massive amount of search marketing spam is created to generate high PPC payouts, which are shared between the search engines and web publishers. There are a number of legitimate SEM agencies turning a tidy profit by charging a percentage of the monthly or annual ad-spend of their clients. With so much money at stake, it's little wonder the biggest players in the search engine and search marketing industries would want to keep the issue under wraps.
This series is going to explore issues associated with Click Fraud from several angles, starting with an attempt to define the issue from a few different points of view. In subsequent articles we will focus on motives and opportunities, technologies and techniques, detection and deception, and alternative search based advertising methods outside the realm of PPC. We expect to touch on a number of other points, many of which will overlap from article to article, during the development of the series.
A good place to start would be an attempt at defining what, exactly, constitutes Click Fraud. In this case, the breadth of the beast is measured in the eye of the beholder.
The Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invalid_click) offers the best definition saying, "Click fraud occurs in pay per click online advertising when a person, automated script, or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating an improper charge per click. Click fraud is the subject of some controversy and increasing litigation due to the advertising networks being a key beneficiary of the fraud whether they like it or not."
Of the search engines themselves, Google provides the simplest, most direct definition. Yahoo! offers a 13-point FAQ that fails to actually provide an exact definition. MSN and Ask also provide fairly good descriptions of the issue and remedies for advertisers. None of the major PPC providers offer advertisers an indication of how complicated click fraud analysis can be.
Google's Definition
Google doesn't like to use the term Click Fraud, preferring a phrase that conveys far fewer implications, "invalid clicks".
According to the Google AdWords Learning Center (http://www.google.com/adwords/learningcenter/text/19457.html), "Invalid clicks are clicks generated by prohibited methods. Examples of invalid clicks may include repeated manual clicking or the use of robots, automated clicking tools, or other deceptive software. Invalid clicks are sometimes intended to artificially and/or maliciously drive up an advertiser's clicks and or a publisher's earnings."
Google provides instruction on how to deal with and report suspicions of click fraud and outlines how to initiate an investigation.
Yahoo!'s Definition
Yahoo! doesn't mind using the phrase Click Fraud. A prominent text-link on the front page of the Yahoo! Search Marketing site leads to the Y!SM Click Fraud FAQ (http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/legal/clickfraud.php) page.
On it, Yahoo! says, "Click fraud is generally considered to be clicks made with bad faith with the sole purpose of generating a charge to the advertiser with zero possibility of a legitimate site visit or transaction occurring. We agree." No clear definition of Click Fraud is provided, aside from Yahoo!'s agreement with a general statement describing it. Apparently, defining click fraud is complicated.
The FAQ suggests it is difficult to judge the purpose of clicks through its network because it is technically impossible to read people's minds. (Ed. note: We agree.) Instead, it is forced to fall back on analysing click behaviour, spotting identifiable patterns in click traffic, trying to define the faith of each click. Yahoo!'s FAQ continues, saying, "In terms of identifiable behavior, we define click fraud as detected illegitimate bots and certain repetitive clicks."
The next paragraph on the FAQ page should be of concern to advertisers. It introduces the phrase, "Traffic Quality Clicks", a phrase describing all clicks that are not generated by (identifiable) click fraud. This includes, "... clicks from domestic and international users and clicks from our various distribution channels and products." A small but scary number of Yahoo!'s distribution channels and products have been linked to malware, spyware and click-bot networks, as a coming article in this series will examine. Come to think of it, someone at Yahoo! needs to take a look at that FAQ page immediately, we're going to and we thing Y!SM marketers should as well.
Microsoft's Definition
MSN, which broke into the PPC market later than its rivals did, shares Google's aversion to the phrase "Click Fraud", agreeing to refer to the problem of "Invalid Clicks" (http://advertising.msn.com/microsoft-adcenter/faqs/invalid-clicks). An FAQ entry offers a short and direct definition of what they consider an Invalid Click saying, "An invalid click is a type of non-billable click resulting from user error, malicious activity or other factors potentially indicative of fraudulent activity."
In a subsequent statement, MSN acknowledges invalid click activity will occur saying, "Any unexplained changes in click activity should be reviewed for validity." The FAQ section goes on to explain how to monitor and appeal click charges.
Ask's Definition
Ask's new Sponsored Listing PPC considers Click Fraud to be an industry problem. Ask's Traffic Quality page (http://sponsoredlistings.ask.com/trafficquality.php) opens with the headline, "We protect you against click fraud."
Ask suggests, "Valid clicks are clicks on a listing that are generated by humans, whose intent we judge to be to engage the advertiser's site (such as to make a purchase, register for services, or navigate content.). Invalid clicks are clicks generated by robots, systems or software whose intent we judge not to be to engage the advertiser's site."
The rest of the page goes into great detail describing how Ask identifies invalid click behavior, mentioning several factors it uses to assess the validity of each click.
Industry Analysts
In a March 26, 2006 iMediaConnection (http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/8830.asp) article analyzing Google's settlement of a major click fraud case called Lane's Gifts v. Google, Clickfacts (http://www.clickfacts.com) cofounder, Michael Caruso provides a well rounded description,
"With pay-per-click ads that show up next to search results, the more times an ad is clicked, the more the advertiser pays. With contextual ads, where ads are placed on third-party websites, pay-per-click ad revenue is split between the publisher and the search company, such as Google.
Sometimes publishers click their own sites to get more revenue from the search engines. Webmasters sometimes form partnerships to click on each other's advertisements. Sometimes people click on their competition's ads, just to drive up their costs. CNET reported, "...the chief executive of an internet marketing company, enjoys clicking on his rivals' text ads ... his competitor must pay as much as $15 each time." There is also bot-like software all over the internet through anonymous "proxy" servers scattered in far-flung locales, creating the illusion that visitors are logging on from all over the place, masking the traffic's true origin.
Then there are even software companies with names like Fakezilla that sell traffic simulators online intended to make sites appear popular and thus boost ranking on search engine pages. They are also used for click fraud."
Six definitive acknowledgements of invalid click activity later, we can all agree that click fraud is a very complicated and very real problem. Stay tuned as we explore it.
About The Author:
Search marketing expert Jim Hedger is one of the most prolific writers in the search sector with articles appearing in numerous search related websites and newsletters, including SiteProNews, Search Engine Journal, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide.
He is currently Senior Editor for the Jayde Online news sources SEO-News (http://www.seo-news.com) and SiteProNews (http://www.sitepronews.com). You can also find additional tips and news on webmaster and SEO topics by Jim at the SiteProNews blog (http://blog.sitepronews.com/).
Is the Newspaper Ombudsman More or Less Obsolete?
Five Reasons Why Having a 'Public Editor' at the Times and Other Papers No Longer Makes Much Sense
By Simon DumencoPublished: March 24, 2008 A colleague of mine recently said some complimentary things about Clark Hoyt, the so-called public editor (i.e., ombudsman) of The New York Times. Unlike his immediate predecessor Byron Calame, Hoyt, my colleague pointed out, is tough, no-nonsense and productively cranky.
Clark Hoyt: Public frenemy at the Times is good, but does it really matter?
I found myself agreeing (Hoyt's better than Calame, no doubt).
Then, I confess, I found myself reverting to my usual position regarding Hoyt: vague indifference.
Then I found myself feeling a little guilty for not particularly caring.
And then I thought: Maybe it's not me, and maybe it's not really even Hoyt. Maybe it's the very idea of the public editor/ombudsman -- a position whose time may have come and gone.
We're nearing the fifth anniversary of the creation of the public-editor gig at the Times (Daniel Okrent, the first PE, was hired in 2003 in the wake of the Jayson Blair catastrophe). The Times, it's worth noting, was late to the game. As the Organization of News Ombudsmen notes on its website, The Courier-Journal and the Louisville Times put the first U.S. newspaper ombudsman to work in June 1967 (borrowing from a Japanese model), and the ONO now lists dozens of members at American newspapers.
Some four decades later, I think it might be time to pull the plug on ombudsfolk. Why? Five reasons spring immediately to mind:
Readers are doing it for themselves. At some papers, ombudsmen go by the title "reader advocate." It would have been hard to imagine even just a few years ago that readers could effectively advocate for themselves, but given the megaphone of the blogosphere, that's clearly the case. In fact, in many cases bloggers -- and energetic non-blogging readers who engage the interest of key bloggers -- can quickly gain the upper hand in defining how controversial newspaper reports are received and spun.
Chances are, Romenesko has already been there, done that. Jim Romenesko's Poynter Institute media blog is, of course, the go-to place for not only journalistic navel-gazing but serious, worthy, in-depth considerations of journalistic issues. If it really matters, chances are Romenesko has already linked it to death and posted plenty of ad hoc commentary on his letters page. The larger online conversation about media personified and enabled by Romenesko effectively makes any newspaper's public-editor column seem both parochial and anemic.
Journalists and editors are doing it for themselves. In the recent past, senior citizens, unemployed cranks and other gadflies were the people most likely to bother writing letters to newspaper editors. Now, of course, plenty of average people of all ages directly engage with journalists and editors through e-mail and especially website comments. And the best newspaper people are addressing that feedback directly (the Times certainly did regarding its controversial January report about John McCain's rumored extramarital affair). That's the way it should be.
Ombudsmen are (sorry) boring as hell. Comes with the territory, I suppose, given that newspaper management invariably expects ombudsfolk to be sober, seasoned, borderline-elderly paternal/maternal types. That sort of pedantic sensibility is just dated and tone-deaf -- and at odds with how newspapers should be engaging with their newly empowered readers.
The money's better spent elsewhere. My message to newspaper executives: There is no shortage of people who are all too happy to second-guess your coverage; they're doing it every day, every hour, every minute. Graciously accept -- even celebrate -- their contributions, and make plenty of space for them online and in print.
And then spend your dwindling budgets on reporting -- instead of reporting on your reporting.
Ethics Opinions
Editor's Note: This opinion was originally published as RPC 156 (Revised).
Opinion rules that an attorney who has advised a client that he has been retained by the client's insurance company to represent him must reasonably inform the client and explain the matter completely when the insurance company pays its entire coverage and is "released from further liability or obligation to participate in the defense" under the provisions of G.S. §20-279.21(b)(4).
Inquiry:
Opinion:
Are You Still Struggling to Control Acne & Wishing You Could Remove Acne Scars Forever ?
by Martha Fitzharris
Skin Infection and Marks: Not a Problem; for a living creature who needs to protect his nude and very moist skin from opportunistic bacteria, pollution and hazards. And HOW! So much so that it created THE SOLUTION, naturally! FOR YOU TOO!
Acne infection may seem an inescapable curse of adolescence. But a natural solution may spare your skin from such annoying vicissitude altogether.
Acne vulgaris. It's an unkind-sounding term for a genuinely unwelcome skin problem: acne breakouts that disturb teens, adults and haunts them when it leaves behind horrid scars.
Technically they are the result of inflammation in the sebum canals and the proliferation, inside clogged pores, of acne bacteria that normally live in symbiosis and balance with us humans. Yes they create sebum for the lubrication of the surface of our skin and its protection from other micro-organisms. But the friendly symbiosis holds only until those bacteria get uncontrolled when disturbed by a feat of excessive sebum production, triggered by hormonal upswings during puberty, as their flow outside is blocked and sebum accumulates within the sebum canals. The latter because the sebum canal is pinched-off by pressure from denatured and hydrated cooked proteins that we have ingested and have become toxins deposited inside the dermis by our lymphatic system, as it lacks the ability to dispose of them through the kidneys, liver and digestive system.
While these phenomena does disturbingly affect adults too, it positively takes up residence on the beautiful faces of those entering the blossoming years of puberty.
While many people can manage to keep acne under control with over the counter products made with harsh chemicals they are mostly unaware that those chemicals have long term damaging effects on their skin, or do not care much, as long as the chemicals destroy the acne bacteria and let them live with fewer pimples and zits. At least that may be true for a while. Unfortunately it is more likely that acne breakouts will return over and over again.
Nevertheless, it is most desirable to get rid of them with something more gentle, natural and without the long term side effects, or to be able to skip them in the first place. Is it not?
No one likes the way those breakouts look not even if they're a telltale sign of an adolescent's growth. Significant energy has been invested to discover how to prevent or get rid of acne breakouts and the scars, red or dark pigmentation they leave behind, with less than satisfactory results. Until recently.
The key lays in new understandings in the biochemistry of how the human body maintains health at the cellular level. Those bring forth by carbohydrate science, a new frontier in knowledge also known as the sweet science of glycobiology. The term glyco stands for the sugar component made of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen of complex macromolecules that bind to proteins and are essential nutrients and structural elements of the dermis, the middle layer of the skin, right below the surface.
Most of our cells are studded with those sticky, sugary molecules. The role of carbohydrates (sugars) in energy production has been long understood. However, their additional, crucial role in orchestrating the healthy structure and function of the body is a relatively new discovery of glycobiology, and reveals their importance in treating underlying causes of problems in the skin (such as acne) and other organs.
The major organic components of human cells, those that contain carbon atoms, are proteins, lipids, carbohydrates and carbohydrate-containing molecules, and the nucleic acids (DNA and RNA). The molecules in which carbohydrates are attached to proteins or lipids are called glycoconjugates and are quite complex. The skin matrix is rich in these complex sugars.
Skin matrix is a framework that holds the skin together and consists mainly of intermeshed polymers such as collagen and elastin plus glycoconjugates. The skin matrix is responsible for the skin's mechanical properties, including firmness, strength, suppleness, and elasticity.
There are three major classes of glycoconjugates: glycoproteins, proteoglycans, and glycolipids. The first two are proteins bound to carbohydrate or glyco chains, the latter are lipids bound to glycomolecules. They are all ubiquitous components of the extra cellular matrix, a complex structure composed of many types of macromolecules which interact with connective tissue cells to maintain tissue integrity and functionality.
These molecules have a large water holding capacity -true moisturizing- and provide support and skin strength.
Advances in skin biology have identified these molecules as also essential for processes such as wound healing, tumor formation, inflammation, skin infection, oxidation, photo aging, thinning, sagging, lack of strength and tensile force as is the case in stretch marks. Thus, a glyconutrient approach gets at the root cause and underlying skin regeneration, defense from microbial pathogens, and repair processes rather than treating only the symptoms.
The skin is positioned at the interface between an organism's internal milieu and an external environment characterized by constant assault with potential microbial pathogens. While the skin was formerly considered an inactive physical protective barrier that participates in host immune defense merely by blocking entry of microbial pathogens, it is now apparent that a major role of the skin is to defend the body by rapidly mounting an innate immune response to injury and microbial insult. In the skin, both resident and infiltrating cells synthesize and secrete small peptides that have a broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity against bacteria, fungi, and viruses. Antimicrobial peptides also act as immune effectors by stimulating cytokine and chemokine production, angiogenesis, and wound healing.
Recently 3 antimicrobial peptides: the cathelicidins, defensins, and dermcidins have been shown to act by directly inhibiting pathogen growth as well as potentiating other branches of the innate, humoral, and cell-mediated immune system.
Antimicrobial peptides are effector molecules of the innate immune system. Human antimicrobial peptides bind to glycosaminoglycans. And the obverse, structural motifs associated with glycosaminoglycans confer antimicrobial properties to certain peptides.
Instead of fighting the symptoms of skin inflammation and an impaired ability of defending oneself from uncontrolled infection the stimulation of endogenous synthesis of glycosaminoglycans and proteoglycans seems to be a more sound strategy and sure way to prevent and recover from acne skin infections.
The good news is that this can be done topically -that is by applying a product on the skin- more so than by a nutritional approach rich on those glyconutrients, which is nevertheless good advice. May we suggest you do a little research about them, for then it may also lead you to avoid eating too much cooked proteins.
Topical application has the advantage that it gets to the target cells directly as nowadays this is possible with current technology. It is achieved by encapsulating the highly water-soluble glyconutrients in tiny microscopic fat vessels or tiny oil droplets called liposomes, making it highly penetrable directly through the skin into the target areas. This transports more glyconutrients directly to the skin areas where it is most needed.
The most natural, complete and balanced source of the complex glycoconjugates required to keep skin healthy is a substance produced by a tiny creature as a fluid that bubbles onto its exposed skin to keep it supple, able to stretch and snap back, and healthy; while also triggering its repair and regeneration when damaged.
This substance is the natural mucous fluid secreted by garden snails. This secretion as is naturally, not some molecules isolated from it (and used as a drug), is now made into a natural skin care cream.
The cream, as all remedies, only works if you use it consistently, preferably twice a day if you are already affected by pimples. And for at least three weeks before you'll notice a significant difference. Of course, given that the process is easy and leaves your skin feeling soft and supple, being assiduous shouldn't be a problem.
Martha Fitzharris, writing about Nature's Gift for Healthy Skin. Cream to Abate Acne Scars, and Clear Acne & Rosacea, and shrink Keloid Scars, Hypertrophic Scars, Prevent and Treat Stretch Marks
Article Source: http://www.rightbiz.com
How the most surprising natural, complete and balanced skin care solution produced by a living being, to protect his skin from hazards and to repair any damage to its collagen and elastic skin fibers, triggers human skin regeneration, "digests" damaged tissues, controls acne and helps to get rid of acne scars and skin blemishes.
Skin Infection and Marks: Not a Problem; for a living creature who needs to protect his nude and very moist skin from opportunistic bacteria, pollution and hazards. And HOW! So much so that it created THE SOLUTION, naturally! FOR YOU TOO!
Acne infection may seem an inescapable curse of adolescence. But a natural solution may spare your skin from such annoying vicissitude altogether.
Acne vulgaris. It's an unkind-sounding term for a genuinely unwelcome skin problem: acne breakouts that disturb teens, adults and haunts them when it leaves behind horrid scars.
Technically they are the result of inflammation in the sebum canals and the proliferation, inside clogged pores, of acne bacteria that normally live in symbiosis and balance with us humans. Yes they create sebum for the lubrication of the surface of our skin and its protection from other micro-organisms. But the friendly symbiosis holds only until those bacteria get uncontrolled when disturbed by a feat of excessive sebum production, triggered by hormonal upswings during puberty, as their flow outside is blocked and sebum accumulates within the sebum canals. The latter because the sebum canal is pinched-off by pressure from denatured and hydrated cooked proteins that we have ingested and have become toxins deposited inside the dermis by our lymphatic system, as it lacks the ability to dispose of them through the kidneys, liver and digestive system.
While these phenomena does disturbingly affect adults too, it positively takes up residence on the beautiful faces of those entering the blossoming years of puberty.
While many people can manage to keep acne under control with over the counter products made with harsh chemicals they are mostly unaware that those chemicals have long term damaging effects on their skin, or do not care much, as long as the chemicals destroy the acne bacteria and let them live with fewer pimples and zits. At least that may be true for a while. Unfortunately it is more likely that acne breakouts will return over and over again.
Nevertheless, it is most desirable to get rid of them with something more gentle, natural and without the long term side effects, or to be able to skip them in the first place. Is it not?
No one likes the way those breakouts look not even if they're a telltale sign of an adolescent's growth. Significant energy has been invested to discover how to prevent or get rid of acne breakouts and the scars, red or dark pigmentation they leave behind, with less than satisfactory results. Until recently.
The key lays in new understandings in the biochemistry of how the human body maintains health at the cellular level. Those bring forth by carbohydrate science, a new frontier in knowledge also known as the sweet science of glycobiology. The term glyco stands for the sugar component made of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen of complex macromolecules that bind to proteins and are essential nutrients and structural elements of the dermis, the middle layer of the skin, right below the surface.
Most of our cells are studded with those sticky, sugary molecules. The role of carbohydrates (sugars) in energy production has been long understood. However, their additional, crucial role in orchestrating the healthy structure and function of the body is a relatively new discovery of glycobiology, and reveals their importance in treating underlying causes of problems in the skin (such as acne) and other organs.
The major organic components of human cells, those that contain carbon atoms, are proteins, lipids, carbohydrates and carbohydrate-containing molecules, and the nucleic acids (DNA and RNA). The molecules in which carbohydrates are attached to proteins or lipids are called glycoconjugates and are quite complex. The skin matrix is rich in these complex sugars.
Skin matrix is a framework that holds the skin together and consists mainly of intermeshed polymers such as collagen and elastin plus glycoconjugates. The skin matrix is responsible for the skin's mechanical properties, including firmness, strength, suppleness, and elasticity.
There are three major classes of glycoconjugates: glycoproteins, proteoglycans, and glycolipids. The first two are proteins bound to carbohydrate or glyco chains, the latter are lipids bound to glycomolecules. They are all ubiquitous components of the extra cellular matrix, a complex structure composed of many types of macromolecules which interact with connective tissue cells to maintain tissue integrity and functionality.
These molecules have a large water holding capacity -true moisturizing- and provide support and skin strength.
Advances in skin biology have identified these molecules as also essential for processes such as wound healing, tumor formation, inflammation, skin infection, oxidation, photo aging, thinning, sagging, lack of strength and tensile force as is the case in stretch marks. Thus, a glyconutrient approach gets at the root cause and underlying skin regeneration, defense from microbial pathogens, and repair processes rather than treating only the symptoms.
The skin is positioned at the interface between an organism's internal milieu and an external environment characterized by constant assault with potential microbial pathogens. While the skin was formerly considered an inactive physical protective barrier that participates in host immune defense merely by blocking entry of microbial pathogens, it is now apparent that a major role of the skin is to defend the body by rapidly mounting an innate immune response to injury and microbial insult. In the skin, both resident and infiltrating cells synthesize and secrete small peptides that have a broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity against bacteria, fungi, and viruses. Antimicrobial peptides also act as immune effectors by stimulating cytokine and chemokine production, angiogenesis, and wound healing.
Recently 3 antimicrobial peptides: the cathelicidins, defensins, and dermcidins have been shown to act by directly inhibiting pathogen growth as well as potentiating other branches of the innate, humoral, and cell-mediated immune system.
Antimicrobial peptides are effector molecules of the innate immune system. Human antimicrobial peptides bind to glycosaminoglycans. And the obverse, structural motifs associated with glycosaminoglycans confer antimicrobial properties to certain peptides.
Instead of fighting the symptoms of skin inflammation and an impaired ability of defending oneself from uncontrolled infection the stimulation of endogenous synthesis of glycosaminoglycans and proteoglycans seems to be a more sound strategy and sure way to prevent and recover from acne skin infections.
The good news is that this can be done topically -that is by applying a product on the skin- more so than by a nutritional approach rich on those glyconutrients, which is nevertheless good advice. May we suggest you do a little research about them, for then it may also lead you to avoid eating too much cooked proteins.
Topical application has the advantage that it gets to the target cells directly as nowadays this is possible with current technology. It is achieved by encapsulating the highly water-soluble glyconutrients in tiny microscopic fat vessels or tiny oil droplets called liposomes, making it highly penetrable directly through the skin into the target areas. This transports more glyconutrients directly to the skin areas where it is most needed.
The most natural, complete and balanced source of the complex glycoconjugates required to keep skin healthy is a substance produced by a tiny creature as a fluid that bubbles onto its exposed skin to keep it supple, able to stretch and snap back, and healthy; while also triggering its repair and regeneration when damaged.
This substance is the natural mucous fluid secreted by garden snails. This secretion as is naturally, not some molecules isolated from it (and used as a drug), is now made into a natural skin care cream.
The cream, as all remedies, only works if you use it consistently, preferably twice a day if you are already affected by pimples. And for at least three weeks before you'll notice a significant difference. Of course, given that the process is easy and leaves your skin feeling soft and supple, being assiduous shouldn't be a problem.
Martha Fitzharris, writing about Nature's Gift for Healthy Skin. Cream to Abate Acne Scars, and Clear Acne & Rosacea, and shrink Keloid Scars, Hypertrophic Scars, Prevent and Treat Stretch Marks
Article Source: http://www.rightbiz.com
How the most surprising natural, complete and balanced skin care solution produced by a living being, to protect his skin from hazards and to repair any damage to its collagen and elastic skin fibers, triggers human skin regeneration, "digests" damaged tissues, controls acne and helps to get rid of acne scars and skin blemishes.
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