THE RELIABILITY OF MARLATT TAXONOMY FOR CLASSIFYING RELAPSES

Marlatt's focus on the relapse situation has had a major impact upon r esearch and clinical practice in treating addictions. One component of his work was the development of a taxonomy for classifying precipitan ts of relapse. This taxonomy has been incorporated into the nomenclatu re of clinicians and clinical researchers as part of an explanatory fr amework for understanding relapses. Despite the taxonomy's influence i t has never been examined for the reliability of its use across resear ch studies. The present study compared the reliability of independent classifications of 149 relapse episodes by trained raters at three res earch laboratories. Despite considerable across-laboratory training, r eliability was found to be inconsistent for research purposes. It is c oncluded that comparability of results based on Marlatt's relapse taxo nomy across independent studies must be subject to question, and assum ptions necessary for the aggregation of a Knowledge base are not suppo rted. Recommendations are offered for improving the reliability of the taxonomy and the methods used to collect taxonomy data. More generall y, questions regarding the value of the specific relapse categories, a s well as the overall taxonomy, are raised.