CUGE: a screening instrument for alcohol abuse and dependence in students.
OBJECTIVE
The prevalence of alcohol abuse on college campuses ranges from 7 to 17%. Frequent heavy drinkers place themselves and others at risk for a variety of adverse consequences and frequently remain undetected. Brief individual interventions result in a significant reduction on the number of drinks. Therefore, detection of students at risk is useful and desirable. The CUGE has been elsewhere described as a promising screening device for problem drinking in students. In order to determine the diagnostic value of this new questionnaire, we set up a validation study in a new and independent population of freshmen.


METHODS
A cross-sectional diagnostic study. Participants were college freshmen of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. All students received a questionnaire, containing the CUGE, being the test of interest, and the CIDI as the reference test.


RESULTS
The CUGE combines a very high sensitivity of 91% with a reasonable specificity of 76.3% in this validation group.


CONCLUSIONS
The CUGE is an excellent screening device in this population of students. In addition, it is a short questionnaire with only yes or no questions. This makes the CUGE easily applicable as a part of broad routine questionnaires.
Van Den Bruel
A
A
Department of General Practice, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. ann.vandenbruel@med.kuleuven.ac.be
Aertgeerts
B
B
Hoppenbrouwers
K
K
Roelants
M
M
Buntinx
F
F
D000328:Adult; D000437:Alcoholism / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology*; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008403:Mass Screening / Q000379:methods*; D015995:Prevalence; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D013334:Students / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires