Hester van Eeren

Comparative effectiveness of MST and FFT | 5 93 | 1991). Furthermore, for each adolescent, there must be a chance of being in either treatment group (Shadish, 2013). The use of a PS in psychological research has increased in recent years (e.g., Austin, 2011; Green & Stuart, 2014; Thoemmes & Kim, 2011; West et al., 2014). The current study used these tutorials and literature as a starting point in comparing MST and FFT. Because previous research has shown that youth receiving MST were more at risk than youth receiving FFT (Gustle et al., 2006; Hendriks et al., 2014), and because the only study to directly compare the effectiveness of FFT and MST thus far takes risk level into account as well (Baglivio et al., 2014), the current study compared the treatment effects not only for the whole sample, but also in two subsamples of youth: with and without a court order. Having a court order can be interpreted as a risk factor and indicate the risk level of an adolescent before treatment. Based on this model, FFT could be sufficiently effective in the group of adolescents without a court order since FFT is expected to be less intensive. Multisystemic Therapy, on the other hand, could be more effective in adolescents with a court order. Since MST and FFT are both aimed at reducing behavioral problems, the primary outcome measure was externalizing problem behavior. Secondary outcomes were the proportion of youth living at home (i.e., the adolescent had not been placed out of home), engaged in school or work at the end of treatment, and without new police contact during the treatment period. With a growing body of research examining evidence-based treatment, and given today’s stringent health care budgets, it seems only logical to allocate youth to a more intensive and likely more expensive treatment only when there is no effective alternative. By comparing evidence-based interventions, budget allocation and the assignment of youth to proper interventions can be optimized. Methods Participants and Procedure As part of the treatment procedure, adolescents and their families filled in questionnaires for Routine Outcome Monitoring (ROM) at the beginning of and after completing treatment. Routine Outcome Monitoring is a measurement system to routinely collect data on the outcome of treatment, evaluate individual treatment progress, and provide transparency regarding the effectiveness of treatment (Buwalda, Nugter, Swinkels, & Mulder, 2011). Within ROM, adolescents and their families provide consent concerning the collection of data and its use for quality control and research. The Medical Ethical Committee of the Erasmus Medical Centre approved this study (METC-2015-124). Between October, 2009 and June, 2014, 1,714 adolescents and their families began either FFT (N=640) or MST (N=1074) at De Viersprong, institute for personality disorders and behavioral problems in the Netherlands. After finishing treatment, 697 (40.7%) participants completed the primary outcome measure on the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) (275 [43%] adolescents who had received FFT and 422 [39.3%] adolescents who had received MST). Such a low percentage of completed questionnaires after treatment