Follow-Up of Young Adults With ADHD in the MTA: Design and Methods for Qualitative Interviews

Objective: Qualitative interviews with 183 young adults (YA) in the follow-up of the Multimodal Treatment Study of Children With and Without ADHD (MTA) provide rich information on beliefs and expectations regarding ADHD, life’s turning points, medication use, and substance use (SU). Method: Participants from four MTA sites were sampled to include those with persistent and atypically high SU, and a local normative comparison group (LNCG). Respondents were encouraged to “tell their story” about their lives, using a semistructured conversational interview format. Results: Interviews were reliably coded for interview topics. ADHD youth more often desisted from SU because of seeing others going down wrong paths due to SU. Narratives revealed very diverse accounts and explanations for SU-ADHD influences. Conclusion: Qualitative methods captured the perspectives of YAs regarding using substances. This information is essential for improving resilience models in drug prevention and treatment programs and for treatment development for this at-risk population.

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