title: A critical evaluation of several alcohol screening instruments using the CIDI-SAM as a criterion measure.
abstract: Four alcohol screening instruments (the AUDIT, CAGE, MAST, and Svanum's scale) were administered to a sample of 306 undergraduate students at a Midwestern university and were compared with regard to several test characteristics, using the alcohol section of the CIDI-SAM (DSM-IV version) as the criterion measure. The performance of these instruments was evaluated using two subsets of subjects: (1) students who currently met diagnostic criteria for alcohol dependence (n = 35); and (2) students who met diagnostic criteria for alcohol dependence in the past and/or at present (i.e., lifetime diagnosis; n = 50). The AUDIT performed significantly better than the other three instruments in identifying students who were currently alcohol dependent, providing a moderate degree of clinical utility with this group. The four instruments did not differ significantly in their ability to identify students with a lifetime diagnosis; each measure provided only a modest degree of clinical utility with this group.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Indiana University Northwest, Gary 46408-1197, USA.
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Clements
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D019973:Alcohol-Related Disorders / Q000145:classification / Q000175:diagnosis*; D000437:Alcoholism / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008403:Mass Screening; D008875:Middle Aged; D010555:Personality Inventory / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011594:Psychometrics; D012016:Reference Values; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology