# Examining the Validity of the Alcohol Use Disorder Recovery Construct Using a Between- and Within-Persons Design

> **NIH NIH R21** · UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI · 2022 · $210,274

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
 There is growing consensus that recovery extends beyond remission to broader biopsychosocial
improvements in domains such as emotional health and community integration (Kelly & Hoeppner, 2014;
Richardson et al., 2019; White, 2012). Qualitative (e.g., Borkman et al., 2016) and quantitative studies of
between-persons differences (Garner et al., 2014; Lusczakoski et al., 2014) appear consistent with broader
recovery definitions. These definitions describe a process, however, and research has not yet addressed the
validity of the broader recovery construct at the within-persons level. This is crucial because evidence that
domains included in recovery definitions converge at the between-persons level does not guarantee that within-
persons change is similarly patterned. Moreover, it is not clear if adult-based conceptualizations of recovery can
be applied to youth (Finch et al., 2020) or if recovery has the same meaning across race/ethnicity, sex, recovery
pathways, and disordered vs. normative use. Our long-term goal is to facilitate efforts to improve recovery-
oriented systems of care. The overall objective for this R21 application is to evaluate the validity of the recovery
construct across nearly 25 years from adolescence to mid-adulthood using an exploratory, data-driven approach.
Our central hypothesis is that domains included in recovery definitions are moderately correlated at the between-
persons differences level, exhibit some important differences in empirical meaning across subgroups, and are
significantly correlated within persons. The rationale for the current project is that it informs operational definition
of recovery from adolescence to mid-adulthood and provides a point of comparison for future R01 level efforts
to validate recovery measures in late adulthood. This study uses data from the National Longitudinal Study of
Adolescent to Young Adult Health, longitudinal measurement invariance analysis, and parallel process latent
growth modeling to achieve the following specific aims: 1) Determine the importance of time and subgroup
membership in moderating the meaning of recovery scores. 2) Determine whether domains included in recovery
definitions are linked within persons. It is our expectation that this study will determine the validity of the alcohol
use disorder (AUD) recovery construct from adolescence to mid-adulthood, identifying whether recovery
indicators function in the same way across groups and intercorrelate within persons. This contribution is
significant because it informs development of measures that capture the multidimensional and dynamic nature
of the AUD recovery process. This project is innovative because it uses a longer-term within-persons design,
includes data from adolescence, conducts longitudinal measurement invariance analyses of recovery
moderators, evaluates criterion validity via alcohol use within persons, and analyzes national data spanning
adolescence to mid-adulthood. These results ...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10592189
- **Project number:** 1R21AA029762-01A1
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI
- **Principal Investigator:** George B. Richardson
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $210,274
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2022-09-20 → 2024-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10592189

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10592189, Examining the Validity of the Alcohol Use Disorder Recovery Construct Using a Between- and Within-Persons Design (1R21AA029762-01A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10592189. Licensed CC0.

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