Reliability of alcohol use indices. The Lifetime Drinking History and the MAST.

are often used as a means of collecting information on drinking behavior for the diagnosis of alcohol misuse, for making treatment decisions and for evaluating treatment outcome. However, various elements can influence the reliability and validity of these data, including the assessment context, detoxication status and the kinds of alcohol-related behaviors measured (1). In the present study, factors which influence test-retest reliability are examined for the widely used Michigan Alcoholism Screening Test (MAST) (2) and for the Lifetime Drinking History (LDH), 2 a structured interview that quantifies lifetime patterns of alcohol consumption. Reliability may be defined as the consistency of an individual's reporting of drinking behavior both within a single assessment (internal consistency) as well as between two assessment occasions (test-retest). Reliability addresses only the reprodueibility or stability of indices related to alcohol use, and is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the validity of a measure. Since the extent of measurement error sets a mathematical upper bound on any

[1]  D. Wechsler.  Manual for the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. , 1955 .

[2]  E. Ghiselli.  Differentiation of individuals in terms of their predictability. , 1956 .

[3]  L. Cronbach.  Essentials of psychological testing , 1960 .

[4]  P. Haberman,et al.  Identifying alcoholics in population surveys. A report on reliability. , 1969, Quarterly journal of studies on alcohol.

[5]  M. Selzer.  The Michigan alcoholism screening test: the quest for a new diagnostic instrument. , 1971, The American journal of psychiatry.

[6]  J. Peto,et al.  Drinking in a London suburb. Reinterview of a subsample and assessment of response consistency. , 1973, Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol.

[7]  J. S. Wiggins,et al.  Personality and Prediction: Principles of Personality Assessment , 1973 .

[8]  M L Selzer,et al.  A self-administered Short Michigan Alcoholism Screening Test (SMAST). , 1975, Journal of studies on alcohol.

[9]  Jacob Cohen,et al.  Applied multiple regression/correlation analysis for the behavioral sciences , 1979 .

[10]  Rohan Wp.  Quantitative dimensions of alcohol use for hospitalized problem drinkers. , 1976 .

[11]  G. Duncan,et al.  Multivariate Analysis: With Applications in Education and Psychology. , 1977 .

[12]  David J. Armor,et al.  Alcoholism and Treatment , 1979, Behavioural Psychotherapy.

[13]  B J Zung.  Psychometric properties of the MAST and two briefer versions. , 1979, Journal of studies on alcohol.

[14]  S A Maisto,et al.  Reliability of alcohol abusers' self-reports of drinking behavior. , 1979, Behaviour research and therapy.

[15]  H. Annis.  Self-Report Reliability of Skid-Row Alcoholics , 1979, British Journal of Psychiatry.

[16]  L. Sobell,et al.  Criterion intervals for pretreatment drinking measures in treatment evaluation. , 1980, Journal of studies on alcohol.

[17]  Leonard S. Feldt,et al.  A test of the hypothesis that Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient is the same for two tests administered to the same sample , 1980 .

[18]  Y. Israel,et al.  Early identification of alcohol abuse: 1. Critical issues and psychosocial indicators for a composite index. , 1981, Canadian Medical Association journal.