Reliability and validity of the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) imbedded within a general health risk screening questionnaire: results of a survey in 332 primary care patients.
BACKGROUND
Self-administered, general health risk screening questionnaires that are administered while patients wait in the doctor's office may be a reasonable and timesaving approach to address the requirements of preventive medicine in a typical 10-min medical visit. The psychometric characteristics of the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) incorporated within a health questionnaire (H-AUDIT) have not been examined.


METHODS
The reliability and validity of the self-administered AUDIT were compared between the H-AUDIT and the AUDIT used as a single scale (S-AUDIT) in 332 primary care patients.


RESULTS
No major demographic or alcohol use characteristics were found between the 166 subjects who completed the H-AUDIT and the 166 individuals who completed the S-AUDIT. The test-retest reliability of the 166 subjects who completed the H-AUDIT [estimated by Spearman correlation coefficient at a 6-week interval (0.88), internal consistency (total correlation coefficients for all items ranged from 0.38 to 0.69; Cronbach alpha index 0.85), and the sensitivity and specificity of the H-AUDIT were used to identify at-risk drinkers' areas under receiver operating characteristic (0.77) and alcohol-dependent subjects' areas under receiver operating characteristic (0.89)] was similar to the same measurements obtained with the 166 individuals who completed the S-AUDIT.


CONCLUSIONS
The AUDIT incorporated in a health risk screening questionnaire is a reliable and valid self-administered instrument to identify at-risk drinkers and alcohol-dependent individuals in primary care settings.
Daeppen
J B
JB
Department of Internal Medicine, CHUV, Lausanne, Switzerland. jean-bernard.daeppen@inst.hospvd.ch
Yersin
B
B
Landry
U
U
Pécoud
A
A
Decrey
H
H
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000437:Alcoholism / Q000517:prevention & control* / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006306:Health Surveys; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011320:Primary Health Care; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric