Steele Seel 2010.

Methods	Design: RCT Follow‐up: 1, 3 months Attrition: 0%
Participants	Mean age (years): 19.3 Sex: 71.4% male N participants: 14 Allocation: n = 7 intervention n = 7 control Setting: vocational training centre; higher risk (low income) young people Country: USA
Interventions	Programme type: motivational enhancement therapy Set‐up: 4 individual sessions Key components: The first session was focused primarily on building rapport, listening to their description of their drug use, providing information and feedback regarding the effects of substances on their lives and bodies and discussing their motivation to change their substance use behaviours (per SOCRATES responses). The second and third sessions were focused on an in‐depth look into their values using either a values card sort or by having a discussion regarding their values, and identifying the discrepancies between their values and drug‐using behaviours. The 4th session reviewed the change plan, assessed high‐risk situations that had occurred during the past week, and elicited strategies for coping with these situations, cravings and slips Duration: not stated Control: alternative intervention
Outcomes	Outcomes: percentage days absent; standard drinks per using day Measures: Form 90; Addiction Severity Index; Stages of Change Readiness and Treatment Eagerness Scale SOCRATES
Funding and Declared Conflicts of Interest	No information
Notes	—
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	High risk	Due to unexpected complications relating to study therapists, randomisation to therapist had to be compromised. At the beginning of the study, participants were randomly assigned via urn randomisation to balance on: sex, ethnicity, total months of addiction(s) and therapist. However, due to unexpectedly having to replace 1 therapist with another who was under time constraints, the first 7 participants were randomised to either treatment or control group by sex, ethnicity and total months of addiction and more heavily weighted to the new therapist if assigned to the treatment group. Also, 3 months into the study there were unexpected time limitations imposed on the duration of the study by the Job Corps due to supervisory issues, and participants were then alternatively assigned to either the control group or treatment group based on entry into Job Corps to ensure equal representation for both groups. In addition, the participants unexpectedly reported their drug screen results to the TEAP counsellor, and were often granted extensions for their final retest, thereby compromising the study’s measure of retention in Job Corps
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	High risk	See above
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	Low risk	No attrition
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	Low risk	All outcomes reported
Blinding of participants and personnel (performance bias) All outcomes	High risk	Not possible to blind participants to intervention. Personnel were not blind to participants' condition
Blinding of outcome assessment (detection bias) All outcomes	High risk	The researcher who conducted the 3‐month follow‐ups was not blind to study conditions, introducing potential bias
Unit of Analysis issues	Low risk	Not applicable