Comments on Project MATCH: matching alcohol treatments to client heterogeneity.

of Project MATCH Research reports from the past 25 years have suggested that treatment outcomes can be improved by carefully matching individuals, based upon their personal characteristics, to specific therapeutic approaches. In a 1989 report, the Institute of Medicine of the US National Academy of Sciences strongly advocated research on patient-treatment matching. Project MATCH was designed to test the general assumption that matching would improve treatment outcomes, and in particular to test specific matching effects hypothesized on the basis of prior matching findings (Project MATCH Research Group, 1993).