Development and validation of a Brief Assessment of Recovery Capital (BARC-10) for alcohol and drug use disorder

- Recovery from substance use disorder is demanding and stressful.
- Recovery capital is viewed as a set of resources that can buffer against biopsychosocial stress.
- Brief recovery capital measures could be useful in clinical and recovery support services.
- Item Response Modeling is the gold standard for shortening existing scales.
- The BARC-10 is a psychometrically sound briefer version of the longer 50-item ARC.

BackgroundIt has been long established that achieving recovery from an alcohol or other drug use disorder is associated with increased biobehavioral stress. To enhance the chances of recovery, a variety of psychological, physical, social, and environmental resources, known as “recovery capital”, are deemed important as they can help mitigate this high stress burden. A 50-item measure of recovery capital was developed (Assessment of Recovery Capital [ARC]), with 10 subscales; however, a briefer version could enhance further deployment in research and busy clinical/recovery support service settings. To help increase utility of the measure, the goal of the current study was to create a shorter version using Item Response Theory models.MethodItems were pooled from the original treatment samples from Scotland and Australia (N = 450) for scale reduction. A reduced version was tested in an independent sample (N = 123), and a Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve was constructed to determine optimal cut-off for sustained remission (> 12 months abstinence).ResultsAn abbreviated 10-item measure of recovery capital captured item representation from all 10 original subscales, was invariant across participant's locality and gender, had high internal consistency (α = .90), concurrent validity with the original measure (rpb =.90), and predictive validity with sustained remission using a cut-off score of 47.ConclusionThe brief assessment of recovery capital 10-item version (BARC-10) concisely measures a single unified dimension of recovery capital that may have utility for researchers, clinicians, and recovery support services.