Service to Others in Sobriety (SOS) questionnaire

Alcoholism is a common form of addiction. Although alcohol is widely available, it is generally considered a harmful substance even when taken in regular small doses.

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is a well known organisation helping people with drinking problems and is available in many countries. The SOS questionnaire helps to measure if there is room for improvement in the way people are giving services to alcoholics in AA settings.

Use of the “Service to Others in Sobriety” questionnaire (Pagano and colleagues, 2009, 2010, 2013) can shape the ways in which alcoholics, clinicians, administrators, and researchers think about helping behavior during recovery. The tool is easy to administer, as respondents are able to complete the assessment in less than 5 minutes. This comprehensive tool assesses activities which are relevant to alcoholics at various levels of recovery. The “SOS” tool can be used to assess the degree to which a client is engaging in helping behavior, as a score below 40 indicates room for improvement.

A significant, negative relationship was found between the SOS score and covert narcissistic behavior, which is theorized to be one of the main roots of alcoholism. Thus, altruistic behaviors measured by the SOS tool can prove to be very beneficial to alcoholics in recovery.

According to the 2010 paper by Pagano et al. scores between 40 and 60 indicate a high level of Alcoholics Anonymous-related helping (AAH):

"" A cut-off score of 40 or higher was found to provide the highest average of sensitivity and specificity (SN = .81; SP = .66), the highest Phi coefficient (φ = .3), and the highest degree of concordance (k = .3). Using this cut-off score to indicate high AAH, 27% of subjects engaged in high AAH during treatment, similar to the rate observed among adults (28%). ""

In sum, use of the “Service to Others in Sobriety” instrument can inform treatment planning, clinical decisions, group interventions, and the ways in which alcoholics, clinicians, administrators, and researchers think about helping.

The questionnaire is not limited by education, gender, race, socioeconomic class, severity of substance use, transportation accessibility, place of residence, or level of meeting attendance. The “Service to Others in Sobriety” assesses formal service positions in 12-step programs, such as public outreach, as well as non-formal forms of AA-related helping, such as reaching out to a fellow sufferer. Service activities assessed are relevant to the daily lives of newcomers and old-timers (in alcoholism support groups) alike, do not require special training, and, with one exception (being a sponsor), are independent of length of time sober.

A significant, negative relationship was found between the SOS and covert narcissistic behaviors. Self-absorption is one theorized root of alcoholism, the solution to which requires getting out of oneself through service of the AA (Alcoholics Anonymous).

The SOS be used for research, but you need to acknowledge the authors and their research paper(s) when writing about it (Pagano et al., 2009, 2010, 2013).

This is a simple scale question.