Research in the field of alcohol abuse evidences a long history of attempts to predict outcome from alcohol treatment programs using situational and intrapsychic factors. To investigate whether alcohol reinforcement expectancies are related to drinking behavior, 42 male veteran graduates of an inpatient alcohol treatment program were interviewed 1 year after program completion. A significant resource person for each subject (wife, girlfriend, or family member) was also interviewed. The interviews involved an assessment of drinking behavior and social functioning. Expectancies were compared to traditional predictors of alcohol treatment outcome for effectiveness in predicting abstinence. An analysis of the results showed that low levels of stress, higher levels of social support, and living with family members were the best predictors of abstinence, accounting for 55% of the variance of the outcome measure. However, overall abstinence was best predicted by lower expectancies of relaxation/tension reduction from alcohol consumption. These findings suggest that the definition of outcome is an important consideration when examining treatment recommendations. (Author/BL)