Foreword

Staying in Touch: A Fieldwork Manual of Tracking Procedures for Locating Substance Abusers in Follow-up Studies is designed to assist substance abuse treatment program staff in tracking and locating clients for conducting follow-up interviews. The collection of data from these follow-up interviews contributes significantly to evaluation studies of treatment effectiveness and provides data on long-term treatment outcomes. In this era of accountability, the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT) emphasizes the need for its grantees to collect data demonstrating the long-term effectiveness of treatment interventions, services, and programs. The Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) of 1993 requires multiple data collection points for almost all GPRA activities. Most grant programs are required to collect data on clients at three data points. Some adolescent programs also collect follow-up data at an additional point in time. These follow-up activities will be greatly facilitated by this manual. The techniques and strategies presented here can be used for locating many types of clients in a variety of environments and locations − from those in outpatient programs to those who are incarcerated.

This manual demonstrates the importance of obtaining data from clients once they enter a program that will facilitate the tracking and locating process later on. These techniques can save staff time and money if they are adhered to upon a client's entry into the program. This manual offers suggestions for staying in touch with clients, tracking them once they leave the program, and locating them through traditional approaches, as well as advanced computerized searches if staying in touch and tracking have not been successful.

The University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) Integrated Substance Abuse Programs staff, under contract to ACS Federal Healthcare, Inc. (formerly Birch & Davis Associates, Inc.), revised this manual. We thank the ISAP staff for their commitment to updating this manual. We also thank the peer reviewers who took the time to review a draft of this manual.

This manual was updated to provide the user with current information on tracking and locating substance abusers. It also provides new and innovative approaches for conducting follow-ups, including the use of computers in searches.

We encourage you to read and use this manual and to keep it nearby with other useful references. It will greatly enhance your ability to achieve the Office of Management and Budget follow-up rate of 80 percent.

Donna Durant Atkinson, Ph.D., Project Director Kevin Mulvey, Ph.D., Project Officer

Louis Podrasky-Mattia, Deputy Project Director Center for Substance Abuse Treatment

Targeted Capacity Expansion Cross-Site Evaluation

ACS Federal Healthcare, Inc. (formerly Birch & Davis Associates, Inc.)

NOTICE: The content of this publication does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, nor does mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.

Authors' Preface

Welcome to the second edition of Staying in Touch: A Fieldwork Manual of Tracking Procedures for Locating Substance Abusers in Follow-up Studies. This manual has been substantially revised to assist CSAT Targeted Capacity Expansion grantees in their tracking and locating efforts to ensure follow-up contact with clients who are involved in program evaluation studies. Because the value of follow-up studies depends, to a large extent, on minimizing attrition of the study sample, a major concern in the evaluation of drug treatment programs is the difficulty of maintaining contact with a group of clients over the months, and sometimes years, after they leave the treatment program.

We have made a number of changes in nearly all content areas of the first edition, originally published in 1996. Most important, the rapid proliferation of online information sources is now reflected in this manual in three ways. First, we added a section on tracking by computer (Section 4.4) that discusses search strategies and the best Internet resources. Second, we included Internet links and search strategies throughout the text. Third, Web-based information is now so essential, that we have made a version of this manual available on the Web. The Internet version has clickable links ( in blue and underlined ) to tracking and locating resources and is located on the UCLA ISAP Web site at: http://www.uclaisap.org/. Because the Internet is so dynamic, with new resources appearing frequently and sites changing often, we will provide periodic updates to the Internet version. We strongly advise anyone doing follow-up on treatment participants to take full advantage of these new and emerging computer resources.

Also added are subsections on jail and prison interviewing (located in Section 5.2), Institutional Review Board clearance (located in Chapter 2), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act requirements (located in Chapter 2), safety in the field (located in Section 4.5), a section on the ideal tracker (Section 4.6), and guidelines on how to deal with potentially reportable situations such as child abuse (Appendix D). The chapter on vital statistics information has been incorporated into Section 5.4, "Miscellaneous Information Sources."

We eliminated the chapter on DMV records because the federal Driver's Privacy Protection Act now heavily restricts access to driver's license information. Some states allow access to DMV information with separate (sometimes notarized) consent. This information is now contained in Section 5.4, "Miscellaneous Information Sources," with specific information for each state in Appendix I. The tightening of security in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks has made it more difficult to locate clients currently in the military because the worldwide locator services have been suspended (see Section 5.4).

"Tracking and locating" refers to the process of searching, as well as the desired outcome: finding the client for the follow-up interview. We use "tracking" and "locating" interchangeably throughout the manual, both referring to the same process. For the sake of consistency, we use the term "client" throughout this manual to refer to someone involved in a program evaluation.

This manual includes information on numerous tracking and locating procedures from the simple and inexpensive to the more difficult and very expensive. We have attempted to provide information and instructions in as much detail as possible for all agencies and procedures involved in the process. Although the governmental structures of the populous states may be similar, government agencies and departments may have different names and different procedures. More sparsely populated states may offer less complicated avenues for investigators. Local laws and customs will also affect the way tracking and locating techniques are applied. For example, in New York City, many clients will not possess a driver's license, whereas most clients in Los Angeles are licensed. Issues of confidentiality also vary from state to state. Information that is easily obtained in one state may be restricted in another.

Evaluators who wish to achieve the highest levels of success in follow-up must allow for time-consuming and sometimes expensive procedures. First, this involves establishing relationships with information sources such as the Criminal Justice System, the Department of Social Services, and other agencies. Considerable time and effort may be necessary to make personal contacts in government agencies and to undergo the necessary introduction and review procedures to gain access to these sources. Though there are standard procedures for gaining such access, a great deal also depends on building trust; public officials must believe that an investigator will protect the confidentiality of the clients and the agency and that the evaluator's work is important enough to justify giving him or her confidential information.

As stated, many federal, state, and local agencies have very careful rules about disclosing information. However, if you can obtain the assistance of someone in authority at your federal funding agency to write a letter to the source agency, that agency will often provide more timely information. Also, if you can present proof of not-for-profit status, source agencies may waive their charge for record searches.

Even though we believe that the locating methods described in this manual apply to most populations, it is entirely possible that some populations are better found by other methods. We welcome your suggestions for locating specific populations.

Success in follow-up also necessitates diligence in applying tracking and locating techniques. The procedures in this manual may need to be repeated several times − success in tracking and locating depends to a large extent on persistence.

Although we have attempted to provide comprehensive, up-to-date information on all resources, we realize that this ongoing project will need continuing updates. Thus, periodically, we will be posting an updated version of this manual on the Internet. We welcome any suggestions you may have for improving this manual.

Elizabeth Hall, Ph.D.
Criminal Justice Research Group
UCLA Integrated Substance Abuse Programs
1640 S. Sepulveda Blvd., Suite 200
Los Angeles, CA 90025
310.445.0874
ehall@ucla.edu
http://www.uclaisap.org/

Acknowledgments

We thank everyone who generously contributed both time and materials to this manual. Our first thanks extend to all the UCLA Integrated Substance Abuse Programs interviewers, both past and present, on whose experiences this manual is largely based and whose efforts have been tireless. For the revised edition, this list includes Maria dela Cruz, Yanscy Flores, and Stacy Calhoun. Also, thanks go to Brian Perrochet and Kris Langabeer, who provided editorial assistance, Wendy Chapman, the project's Webmaster, Kris Langabeer, ISAP's Web supervisor, and Ken Booker, ISAP's Webmaster. We would also like to thank ISAP interviewers whose experiences contributed to the first edition, including Mark Kowalewski, Ron Weathers, Cathryn Cotter, Greg Cason, Elaine Quine, Robert Crowley, Luz Rodriguez, Mike Frias, Anisa Mendizabal, Luis Santiago, Debbie Velasquez, and Nyja Tapscott.

Second, we thank our peer reviewers, who have a great deal of experience in the tracking and locating field, for their contributions to this text. Reviewers of the second edition are: Verda Olayinka, Director of the Bureau of HIV/AIDS, HIV Prevention, Office of Corrections AIDS Prevention for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene; M. Douglas Anglin, Associate Director of ISAP; and Christy Scott of Chestnut Health Systems.

First edition reviewers were Michelle Kipke of Children's Hospital in Los Angeles; Kay Malloy and Dean Gerstein of National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago; Paul Goldstein of the University of Illinois; Wendy Graham of National Development and Research Institutes; David Desmond and James Maddux of the University of Texas, Jim Devore of the Research Triangle Institute, and Susanna Nemes and David Nurco of the University of Maryland.

Special thanks are extended to Kevin Mulvey of the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment and Donna Atkinson and Louis Podrasky-Mattia of ACS/Birch & Davis for facilitating the development of the second edition of this manual. We would also like to thank Paul Restovich, ISAP's fund manager, and Jean De Pass of the UCLA Office of Contract and Grant Administration.

We are also grateful to those who provided up-to-date information about their services, including: Major Leslie Peacock of the Salvation Army, Dorita Sewell of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Rose Westerlund at Experian, and Wanda Paulhill at Credit Bureau Reports.