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twelve months there was a significant difference in the use of cognitive coping but not in behavioural coping between those who had achieved statistically reliable change between three months and twelve months and those who had not in the high dependence group. This may indicate that people who change at different rates also use different coping strategies in the course of such change.
Low dependence individuals who became abstinent used significantly more of all coping than those who did not become abstinent. No significant correlations were found between amount of change in dependence or the level of dependence at three months and the use of each sort or both sorts of coping strategies. This could be because there was far less scope for change on these measures in this group.
A somewhat weaker finding was that, of those who had reliable change at three months, people with high dependence at intake used behavioural coping more frequently relative to cognitive coping at both intake and three months than those with low dependence. This was shown by computing the ratio of cognitive to behavioural coping; cognitive coping scores showed a higher absolute frequency of use at each data collection point and in all groups but the ratio of behavioural to cognitive coping was higher in the high dependence group whose dependence diminished than in the low dependence group.
There is a possibility that findings relating to change in dependence in the low dependence group were limited by the fact that change in low dependence individuals may be more difficult to measure. If it was the case, as discussed in the further investigations of the LDQ reported in Chapter 4, that the instrument was less sensitive at the lower end of the scale, then some difficulties might emerge in investigating changes in the low dependence group.
10.1.3. Predictors of change in dependence
In regression analyses coping as a whole or as separate cognitive and behavioural scores did not emerge as a significant predictor of change in dependence or of substance use. The question of the relationship between changes in coping and in dependence was not able to be answered with the available data or with the model constructed for investigation of the predictors of change in dependence. It is possible that other mediating factors, for instance the role of treatment, were not identified because they were insufficiently described. Treatment did emerge as a significant predictor of abstinence at three months, suggesting the possibility that use of the substance as the target of treatment mediates between treatment and change in dependence. Questions remain on the way coping is used when dependence is reduced, whether dependence is reduced because of the
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