Brief alcoholism screening questionnaire: establishment and validity in Taiwanese.
OBJECTIVE
There has been a marked increase in the prevalence of alcoholism in the Taiwanese population over the past 6 decades. This study was designed to establish a Taiwanese Brief Alcoholism Screening Questionnaire (BASQ) for use in early detection in medical and public health settings.


METHODS
Interview data were collected from the database of the Taiwan Psychiatric Epidemiological Project (TPEP). The TPEP interviews had been conducted using the Chinese-modified version of the Diagnostic Interview Schedule (DIS-CM) that included a section on alcoholism diagnosis. Data collected from a community sample of 13,373 subjects was used in this study. Twenty nine DIS-CM items for alcoholism diagnosis were entered into an analytic model with 7 statistical filters to identify cross-cultural items. A brief alcoholism screening questionnaire was constructed using these selected items. The validity of the questionnaire was tested in subjects (n = 457) recruited from a local medical center, a hospital clinic, and an alcoholism clinic of a psychiatric center.


RESULTS
Four cross-cultural items were identified and the BASQ was constructed. This BASQ had a best cut-off point of 3 with adequate sensitivity (0.86 to 0.88), specificity (0.88 to 0.89), and positive prediction rate (0.90 to 0.91). It detected a varying prevalence of alcoholism (10.1 to 90.3%) in diverse clinical settings.


CONCLUSIONS
A 4-item BASQ was established with adequate validity for clinical and public health application in the early detection of alcoholism in Taiwanese subjects.
Hwu
Hai-Gwo
HG
Department of Psychiatry, National Taiwan University Hospital and College of Medicine, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.
Gorenc
Klaus-Dieter
KD
Peredo
Sandra
S
Hwang
Tzung-Jeng
TJ
Abreu
Luis Felipe
LF
Chen
Chiao-Chicy
CC
D000437:Alcoholism / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology; D016009:Chi-Square Distribution; D003466:Cultural Characteristics; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D015995:Prevalence; D011594:Psychometrics; D012372:ROC Curve; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013624:Taiwan / Q000453:epidemiology