The Assessment of Recovery Capital: Properties and psychometrics of a measure of addiction recovery strengths

Introduction and Aims Sociological work on social capital and its impact on health behaviours have been translated into the addiction field in the form of ‘recovery capital’ as the construct for assessing individual progress on a recovery journey. Yet there has been little attempt to quantify recovery capital. The aim of the project was to create a scale that assessed addiction recovery capital. Design and Methods Initial focus group work identified and tested candidate items and domains followed by data collection from multiple sources to enable psychometric assessment of a scale measuring recovery capital. Results The scale shows moderate test–retest reliability at 1 week and acceptable concurrent validity. Principal component analysis determined single factor structure. Discussion and Conclusions The Assessment of Recovery Capital (ARC) is a brief and easy to administer measurement of recovery capital that has acceptable psychometric properties and may be a useful complement to deficit-based assessment and outcome monitoring instruments for substance dependent individuals in and out of treatment.