At a Glance

Funder:

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration

Project Time Frame:

1997-present

National Survey of Substance Abuse Treatment Services

Doctors, clinicians, policymakers, and others concerned with substance abuse treatment need a mechanism for quantifying the dynamic character and composition of the treatment delivery system in the United States. The National Survey of Substance Abuse Treatment Services (N-SSATS) survey collects information about substance abuse programs and facility characteristics to profile the places offering services, services being offered, and number of clients receiving services. These data are also used to annually update the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's (SAMHSA) Online Locator and National Directory of Substance Abuse Treatment Service Facilities.

Mathematica worked with SAMHSA to redesign the questionnaire and data collection procedures for the survey that became N-SSATS. We have conducted the survey annually since 1997.

We have implemented new and innovative techniques to increase response rates and collect data more efficiently during each phase of the annual, multimode survey. In the first year we ran this survey of about 18,000 substance abuse treatment facilities, we improved the response rate to 89 percent; the following year, we achieved a response rate of 93 percent. Since 1999, our response rates have been 95 percent or higher each year. In 2008, we pilot tested an approach suggested by facilities that involved prepopulating certain factual fields with responses from the previous year’s survey. Over the years, we have also introduced paperless editing for email questionnaires and incorporated randomized experiments to test the effectiveness of such procedures as error-prompting on web questionnaires.

As a result of our continued success with N-SSATS resulting from our extensive survey experience, SAMHSA is modeling other establishment surveys after this one. Annual surveys of this magnitude are challenging, because three different surveys are happening at certain points—last year’s survey is being completed while this year’s survey is under way and next year’s is being planned. To stay on schedule and build a good working relationship, we contact representatives in each state at the start of the annual cycle to update them, solicit help and ideas, and talk about how to tailor data collection to suit their special needs.