Study title

This study charted Finnish substance users' situation in life and alcohol and drug use. Main themes included the problems that arose from the respondents' substance use, their motivation to stop using substances, and their use of social services. Additionally, the data include evaluations of client meeting discussions between social counsellors and clients at A-clinics, which offer substance abuse and mental health services. The data were collected as part of a research project on the adherence of motivational interviewing in the initial substance abuse setting and its effect on clients' substance abuse harm reduction (the MISA project), funded by the Academy of Finland. The data consist of a pre-treatment survey, evaluations of counselling session discussions by both the counsellor and the client, and post-treatment surveys. The pre-treatment survey and the evaluations were completed during the counselling sessions, and the post-treatment surveys were completed as phone interviews six and twelve months after treatment. This dataset can be connected to the qualitative dataset FSD3368 Substance Abuse Treatment in Outpatient Clinics: Client Meetings 2008-2009, which consists of transcriptions of the counselling session discussions. The respondents in the two datasets can be connected with a unique client number. The qualitative dataset is only available in Finnish. The pre- and post-treatment surveys were nearly identical. First, the clients' situation in life and use of alcohol in the past six months were surveyed with questions from the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT). The questions focused on, for example, how often the respondents consumed alcohol, how often they had not been able to stop drinking once they had started, how often they had felt guilt or remorse after drinking, and whether they had felt that their drinking had effected their social relationships negatively. The respondents' substance use was examined with questions regarding...