Recovery housing in Scotland: international literature review

2. Methodology

A review of the online literature was carried out end of June-July 2023. A search strategy was developed, and search terms piloted to ensure they captured publications relevant to current understanding.

Due to the exploratory nature of the review, a ‘wide net’ approach was adopted and as such the inclusion criteria was developed to capture all literature, including academic and grey literature, on recovery housing that focused on the treatment of problem substance use published in English between the years 2003 and 2023. All literature identified that was, either directly or indirectly, relevant to the Scottish context was included. Literature which focused on recovery homes that primarily exist for people experiencing homelessness, ex-offenders, veterans, or other groups, but also integrate support for social care and health issues, including substance addiction was excluded as this was beyond the scope of this review. Given the breadth of the literature, these sub-topics could likely warrant a review in their own right.

The literature captured was analysed thematically using a narrative synthesis approach.

2.1 Search strategy

2.1.1 Grey literature

This review began with a search of grey literature using the search engine Google. A initial scoping search of ‘recovery housing’ and ‘drugs or alcohol or addiction’ was conducted to identify relevant documents and webpages. This identified various recovery housing organisations and recovery support webpages that discussed recovery housing. This search identified both key online publications and also informed and refined subsequent searches.

2.1.2 Academic literature

Literature was identified by searching three academic databases: CINAHL, Sociology Source Ultimate, and Web of Science. These databases cover health, human behaviour, psychology, and medical academic literature. A narrow search strategy was developed, which utilised BOOLEAN operators as shown below:

(‘Oxford house’ OR ’Oxford Houses’ OR ’Oxford Housing’ OR ’Recovery house’ OR ’Recovery Housing’ ’OR ’Recovery Houses’ OR ‘Recovery home’ OR ‘Recovery homes’ OR ‘Rehab* house’ OR ‘Rehab* Housing’ OR ‘Rehab* Houses’ OR ‘Sober living’ OR Sober-living OR ‘Transition* house’ OR ‘Transition* housing’ OR ‘Communal living’ OR ‘Communal housing’ OR ‘Halfway house’ OR ‘Dry house’)

AND

(‘Substance misuse’ OR Drugs OR Addiction OR ‘Substance use’ OR Alcohol OR ‘Substance abuse*’) Pilot searches were conducted before the strategy was finalised. The initial searches were wider, and incorporated terms such as residential treatment, residential recovery, and social support. However, these searches captured a high volume of ineligible results that were more relevant to residential rehabilitation, as opposed to recovery housing.

To aid the narrower search strategy selected, supplementary search techniques were employed. This involved hand searching on Google and Google Scholar and forward/backward citation searching.

2.1.3 Search results

The search was conducted on the 23^rd of June 2023. The search string identified 3,624 articles across the three databases, which underwent a two-stage screening process by one researcher. In the first stage of screening, titles and abstracts of the identified studies were screened against the eligibility criteria and duplicates were removed. This reduced the total number of articles down to 278. In the second stage of screening, the remaining publications underwent full-text screening against the eligibility criteria. A total of 112 papers were identified via this search for inclusion in this review. Supplementary searching identified a further 16 studies for inclusion. In total, 128 publications were identified and included in this rapid review of the literature.^[1]