The project was an 8-year, multi site, $27-million investigation that studied which types of alcoholics respond best to which forms of treatment.
The programs were administered by psychotherapists and, although twelve-step methods were incorporated into the therapy, actual Alcoholics Anonymous meetings were not included.
Effectiveness for all treatments was measured by reduction in frequency and intensity of drinking, whereas twelve-step and abstention-based programs, he argued, should claim no improvement without full abstention.
[7][dubious – discuss] George Vaillant argues researchers need to examine differences between alcoholics who succeed in recovering and those who fail, rather than limiting themselves to a search for contrasts among professionally run treatments.
Project MATCH was poorly designed "to say the least" asserts psychologist G. Alan Marlatt of the University of Washington in Seattle, a pioneer in the development of behavioral treatments for alcohol use disorder.