An increasing number of large-scale trials have allowed for statistically powerful evaluations of psychosocial interventions for alcohol use. Project MATCH [18] evaluated the efficacy of three interventions--Motivational Enhancement Therapy (MET), Twelve-Step Facilitation (TSF), and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)--for treating alcohol dependence. The CBT intervention was a skills-based treatment containing elements of RP. Spanning nine data collection sites and following over 1700 participants for up to three years, Project MATCH was the largest psychotherapy trial conducted to that point. Multiple matching hypotheses were proposed in evaluating differential treatment efficacy as a function of theoretically relevant client attributes. Primary analyses supported only one of sixteen matching hypotheses: outpatients lower in psychiatric severity fared better in TSF than in CBT during the year following treatment [18]. Although primary analyses provided relatively little support for tailoring alcohol treatments based on specific client attributes, matching effects have been identified in subsequent analyses (described in more detail later).
